UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  NATION 

OR 

From  the  Indian  Trail  to  the  Railroad 

National  Edition 
Complete  in  Twelve  Volumes 


•- 


From  an 


Btfirimer  a 

i!  painting  by  /).  ('.  Hutchison. 


NATIONAL  EDITION 

COMPLETE  IN  TWELVE  VOLUMES 


guflde^Nation 


THE  MINE 


Charles  Howard  Shinn 


V 


Copyright,  18% 
By  D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1908 
By  THE  BRAMPTON  SOCIETY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAQK 

XIII.— MINING  LITIGATION 123 

XIV. — STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS       .       .    136 

XV.— BOBRASCA  AND  BONANZA 154 

XVI. — DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA  ....    173 

XVII.— THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL 194 

XVIII. — OUTSIDE  VIEW  OP  A  MINE 209 

XIX.— THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND 222 

XX.— THE  MINING  COMMUNITY 239 

XXI.— THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  is 259 

XXII.— THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY     .       .       .267 

The  Mine.  II. 


21 j 184 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PROSPECTORS  DISCOVER  A  GOLD  LEDGE        .    FRONTISPIECE 

From  an  Original  Fainting  by  D.  C.  Hutchison 

PAGE 
ON  THE   WAY  TO  THE  MINE 123 

EUREKA  MINE 163 

DOWN  IN  A  GOLD  MINE 182 

ENTRANCE  TO  THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL,  SUTRO,  NEVADA   .  205 

THE  MOUTH  OF  A  SHAFT 217 

THE  BOTTOM   OF  A  SHAFT  ,      234 


The  Mine.  II. 


On  the  Wav  to  the  Mine. 


THE   STORY   OF  THE  MINE. 


CHAPTER  XIIL 

MINING   LITIGATION. 

IT  would  be  easy  to  moralize  about  the  "general 
cussedness  "  of  all  mining,  particularly  silver  mining, 
"which  is  full  of  dips,  spurs,  and  angles,"  and,  like 
gambling,  extremely  uncertain.  This  remark  applies 
with  peculiar  force  to  the  Comstock  .camps..  There, 
as  Calvin  would  have  said,  the  hanfl'  of  Satan  was  daily 
manifest.  Never  since  the  world  began  were  conflict 
ing  interests,  honest  and  dishonest,  more  wildly  en 
tangled  than  in  that  early  Nevada. 

The  trouble  began  in  the  carelessness,  •  or  worse, 
of  the  prospectors  of  1858  and  1859.  I  have  alluded 
in  a  previous  chapter  to  some  of  their  meetings  to  de 
clare  laws  respecting  claims,  and  to  the  Gold  Hill  black 
smith  who  kept  his  record  book  in  a  saloon  where  all 
and  sundry  could  and  did  alter  the  entries.  If  prop 
erly  carried  out,  the  district  regulations  might  have 
done  good  service;  but  they  were  so  sadly  neglected 
that  none  of  the  early  miners  had  what  lawyers 
would  call  a  title.  Lord,  in  his  history,  cites  the 
example  of  the  original  claim  of  O'Biley,  McLaugh- 
lin,  Penrod,  and  Comstock,  now  held  by  the  Ophir  and 
Consolidated  Virginia  and  California  companies.  The 
four  men  put  a  stake  on  the  line  of  the  croppings  fifty 
ieet  south  of  the  place  where  the  strike  was  made,  and 
another  one  fifteen  hundred  feet  north  of  the  first  stake. 
This  gave  one  claim  to  each  of  the  four,  and  one  extra 

133 


124:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

claim  for  the  discovery,  which  was  the  custom  at  the 
time.  They  posted  no  notice  (as  the  rules  required), 
they  recorded  no  notice  either  then  or  afterward  (ex 
pressly  stated  to  be  the  most  important  evidence  of 
ownership).  Then  came  one  James  Cory,  a  chum  of 
Comstock's,  and  asked  for  a  share.  Not  receiving  it, 
he  posted  a  notice  and  claimed  four  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  adjoining  the  claim  of  Comstock  &  Company. 
This  was  half  as  much  again  as  he  had  a  right  to  under 
the  district  laws.  Big  John  Bishop  and  a  miner  named 
Camp  told  him  that  it  was  their  ground,  and  the  three 
finally  divided  but  did  not  record  the  claims.  Several 
other  overlapping  claims  were  made  informally,  and 
shortly  afterward  the  miners  discovered  that  upon 
one  part  of  the  lode,  seven  hundred  and  ten  feet  long, 
they  had  actually  taken  up  and  recorded  fifteen  hun 
dred  and  fifty  feet!  Compromises  and  various  read 
justments  followed,  but  so  obscure  and  conflicting 
were  the  records  and  the  "  memory  of  witnesses  "  that 
titles  in  this  part  of  the  Comstock  have  always  been 
unsettled. 

There  is  a  very  strong  reason  in  the  nature  of  mines 
and  miners  for  many  of  the  delays  in  properly  defin 
ing  a  claim.  Every  part  of  a  ledge  is  not  equally  rich. 
Ore  occurs  in  "  seams,"  "  chimneys,"  or  "  chutes,"  and 
as  soon  as  a  man  "  struck  it  rich  "  his  first  thought 
was  usually  to  explore  it  until  he  could  select  and  stake 
out  the  best  three  hundred  feet.  Nearly  all  of  the 
early  locators  on  the  Comstock  were  trying  to  get  the 
richest  slice  in  the  lode,  and  they  kept  away  from  the 
recorder's  office;  or  if  they  entered  a  claim,  they  took 
care  to  leave  it  in  such  shape  that  it  could  be  altered, 
like  some  of  the  Spanish  land  grants  of  California 
that  were  "  floated  "  ten  or  fifteen  miles,  much  to  the 
subsequent  profit  of  attorneys. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  125 

Even  when  the  "  metes  and  bounds "  were  well 
denned  the  guileless  miners  could  not  always  be  de 
pended  upon  to  leave  them  so.  One  of  the  pioneers 
mentions  a  mining  suit  in  which  the  matter  hinged 
upon  the  location  of  a  stump  that  marked  the  corner. 
Judge  and  jury  adjourned  and  went  to  look  at  the 
stump.  It  had  been  dug  up  bodily  during  the  night 
and  carried  off,  and  the  ground  was  so  levelled  that  not 
the  slightest  clew  remained.  Each  side  accused  the 
other,  and  the  case  was  never  decided. 

All  the  American  mining  camps  have  maintained 
in  the  case  of  quartz  ledges  the  right  to  an  inclined 
location — that  is,  the  right  to  take  a  claim  of  definite 
size  and  follow  it  downward  at  any  angle  or  angles, 
taking  all  the  ore  in  the  vein  and  in  its  legitimate 
branches.  A  miner,  according  to  this  idea,  takes  up 
a  piece  of  ground  simply  for  the  lode,  and  goes  wherever 
it  goes.  Spanish  mining  law,  on  the  contrary,  recog 
nises  only  the  square  location.  According  to  the  Span 
ish  plan,  as  soon  as  a  ledge  passes  beyond  the  boundary 
of  a  square  piece  of  ground  of  given  size  it  belongs 
to  the  man  in  whose  tract  it  lies.  One  can  easily  see 
that  the  Spanish  system  must  prevent  much  trouble 
and  render  the  single-vein  problem  immaterial.  In 
fact,  it  rules  out  of  court  nine  tenths  of  all  the  cases 
that  lead  to  lawsuits.  Matters  rapidly  went  from  bad 
to  worse  on  the  Comstock  until  the  most  casual  ob 
server  would  have  seen  a  wild  Walpurgis-night  revel 
of  conflicting  claims  of  every  size,  shape,  and  age  tum 
bling  over  each  other  three  and  four  deep.  It  is  hardly 
surprising,  for  the  Comstock  was  not  the  only  vein 
on  the  side  of  Mount  Davidson,  nor  even  the  most 
prominent  one.  The  Virginia  lode  was  nearly  parallel, 
and  other  veins,  too  many  to  name  and  hardly  worth 
while  digging  up  from  the  dust  of  forgotten  records, 


126  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

crossed  and  recrossed  the  original  Comstock  until  even 
ideally  honest  and  painstaking  miners,  geologists,  and 
courts  would  have  found  it  impossible  to  straighten 
out  the  tangle  that  began  when  the  first  stake  was 
driven  at  Gold  Hill.  When,  as  of  course  soon  hap 
pened,  the  miners  became  very  much  excited,  when 
courts  and  lawyers  were  subjected  to  enormous  tempta 
tions,  and  when  it  was  found  that  geologists  and  min 
eralogists  could  not  settle  the  question  beforehand, 
the  result  is  easy  to  sum  up.  Everywhere  in  the  period 
of  litigation  there  were  almost  inconceivable  expenses, 
ruining  the  lesser  mines,  preventing  dividends  even 
where  miners  were  working  rich  bodies  of  ore.  Titles 
were  clouded  for  years,  and  the  finest  legal  intellects 
in  America  wrestled  on  the  Comstock  in  cases  that  are 
still  famous. 

Let  us  turn  again  to  the  genial  Koss  Browne  for  a 
characteristic  picture  of  the  contentious  miners.  He 
says  that  when  he  entered  Virginia  City  by  way  of  fitly- 
named  Devil's  Gate  a  fraction  of  the  crowd  "  were  en 
gaged  in  a  lawsuit  relative  to  a  question  of  title.  The 
arguments  used  on  both  sides  were  empty  whisky  bot 
tles,  after  the  fashion  of  the  Basilinum  or  club  law 
which,  according  to  Addison,  prevailed  in  the  colleges 
of  learned  men  of  former  times.  Several  of  the  dis 
putants  had  been  already  knocked  down  and  convinced, 
and  various  others  were  freely  shedding  their  blood 
in  the  cause."  The  Comstock  ledge,  Mr.  Browne 
thought,  was  very  fine,  but  it  was  held  at  a  thousand 
dollars  a  running  foot  "  when  not  even  the  great  Com 
stock  himself  could  tell  where  it  was  running  to."  The 
whole  region  was  in  the  midst  of  a  free  fight  among 
the  various  claimants.  The  Comstock  was  "  in  a  mess 
of  confusion."  Its  shareholders  had  the  most  enlarged 
views,  but  those  who  had  struck  croppings  around 


MINING  LITIGATION.  127 

the  Comstock  were  just  as  liberal  in  their  ideas,  so 
that,  in  brief,  "  everybody's  spurs  were  running  into 
everybody  else's  angles/'  The  Cedar  Hill  Com 
pany  was  spurring  the  Miller  Company,  the  Virginia 
ledge  was  spurring  the  Continuation,  the  Don  Com 
pany  was  spurring  the  Billy  Chollar,  the  Washoe 
was  spurring  everything  else,  and  all  these,  the 
Comstock,  and  a  dozen  others,  were  interlocked 
spurs  with  spurs  and  angles  with  angles,  like  a  Chinese 
puzzle. 

A  study  of  the  map  of  the  United  States  Geological 
Survey,  showing  the  locations  at  even  a  later  date  when 
many  of  the  earlier  claims  had  been  consolidated  out 
of  existence,  will  convince  any  one  that  the  preceding 
description  of  the  Gordian  knots  left  for  the  lawyers 
are  only  the  merest  glimpses  of  a  state  of  things  that 
should  never  have  existed,  and  that  cost  the  young 
mining  communities  of  Nevada  uncounted  millions. 
Still  the  age  of  litigation,  here  as  elsewhere,  only  proved 
the  existence  of  a  rich  camp.  Men  do  not  fight  "  like 
grim  death  "  for  worthless  ground. 

Contests  in  the  courts  began  as  soon  as  the  promi 
nent  mines  had  cut  far  enough  into  the  ore  bodies  to 
be  ready  to  infringe  upon  each  other's  claims.  The 
real  geology  of  the  district  then  became  a  pressing 
problem.  Since  the  miners  were  determined  to  hold 
fast  to  the  "  inclined-location "  method,  the  main 
problem  was  as  follows:  Were  the  quartz  bodies  nar 
row  veins  separated  by  barren  rock,  or  was  all  the  vein 
matter  deposited  in  one  great  irregular  fissure,  partly 
filled  with  wedges  and  masses  of  porphyry?  Did  the 
Comstock  really  consist  of  a  single  vein,  or  was  it  a 
multiple  vein?  Such  were  the  questions  that  divided 
the  miners  into  two  hostile  camps.  What  is  now  uni 
versally  recognised  as  a  monster  lode  then  seemed 


128  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

to  consist  of  a  number  of  narrow,  well-defined  ledges, 
two  of  which  were  very  prominent 

But  to  call  the  system  a  single  lode  was  to  entitle 
the  first  locators  to  divide  among  themselves  nearly 
everything  along  the  hill  slope  and  over  the  whole 
Comstock  basin,  and  the  rows  of  later  locations,  east 
and  west,  were  annihilated  at  a  blow.  Even  the  Cali- 
fornians  who  had  bought  out  the  original  claimants 
of  the  Comstock  did  not  dream  of  such  wide-reach 
ing  ownership.  Besides,  the  great  majority  were  out 
side,  and  naturally  held  to  the  popular  many-ledge 
theory.  A  few  strongly  organized  and  wealthy  com 
panies,  holding  what  turned  out  to  be  the  main  ledge, 
ultimately  decided  to  push  the  single-ledge  theory, 
but  at  first  all  the  evidence  was  dead  against  them. 

Since  the  Comstock  near  the  surface  dipped  toward 
the  west,  it  separated  more  and  more  from  the  line  of 
claims  on  the  east,  and  the  first  conflict  was  therefore 
with  the  nearest  line  of  claims  on  the  west.  The  small 
ledges  here  seemed  very  rich  and  were  perpendicular,  or 
nearly  so.  Thus  the  sloping  shafts  of  the  Ophir,  Mexi 
can,  and  other  mines  soon  came  in  contact  with  the  ver 
tical  shafts  on  what  was  termed  the  "  middle  lead."  The 
result  was  the  case  of  Ophir  versus  McCall,  which  came 
up  in  Genoa,  September  3,  1860,  before  Judge  Cradle- 
baugh  in  the  loft  of  a  livery  stable.  Several  hundred 
armed  men  sat  behind  the  respective  parties  to  the  suit. 
One  witness  was  shot  at  a  number  of  times  as  he  rode 
down  the  ravine  at  night.  Although  the  famous  Wil 
liam  M.  Stewart — rugged,  masterful,  full  of  vitality, 
already  recognised  as  the  coming  king  of  the  Com 
stock — was  attorney  for  the  Ophir,  he  could  only 
force  a  disagreement  of  the  jury. 

Mining  cases  accumulated  steadily  until  Judge  Mott 
opened  the  First  District  Court  in  February,  1862. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  129 

By  that  time  every  valuable  claim  in  the  region  was  a 
"  fighting  claim  " — that  is,  it  was  deeply  and  violently 
in  litigation.  Suits  to  dispossess  claimants,,  suits  to 
prove  trespass,  perjury,  or  fraud,  single-ledge  suits  and 
multiple-ledge  suits — these  were  as  thick  as  blackber 
ries.  Wrote  a  correspondent  of  the  San  Francisco 
Bulletin:  "We  shall  never  outgrow  this  perpetual 
litigation  until  the  courts  rule  that  all  indefinite  or 
floating  claims  are  worthless.  If  you  find  anything 
worth  having,  some  one  will  levy  blackmail." 

Fights  between  rival  claimants  were  frequent  and 
bloody.  Sometimes  such  fights  took  place  "  at  the 
front" — that  is,  at  the  end  of  a  drift.  If  there  was 
reason  to  believe  that  a  rival  company  was  working 
on  disputed  ground,  the  superintendent  of  the  first 
company  took  steps  to  drive  them  away  either  by  smok 
ing  them  out  with  sulphur  or  other  substances,  or  by 
running  a  drift  into  the  place  and  sending  a  body  of 
miners  with  picks  and  shovels  to  overpower  the  enemy. 
"  Fighting  men  "  were  hired  at  ten  dollars  a  day  in 
some  cases,  armed  with  knives  and  pistols,  and  sent  to 
disputed  territory.  In  fact,  while  cases  were  being 
argued  in  the  courts,  miners  were  sometimes  fighting 
underground.  The  men  of  the  Keystone  Company 
drove  away  the  miners  of  the  Peerless,  took  possession 
of  their  shaft,  and  filled  it  with  waste  rock.  The  Grass 
Valley  miners  were  assaulted  through  a  drift  by  men 
of  the  Bajazette  and  Golden  Era  and  driven  to  the  sur 
face.  The  Uncle  Sam  boys  drove  out  the  Centreville 
men  in  a  similar  manner.  Yellow  Jacket  sappers  cut 
into  the  Gentry  shaft  and  smoked  out  their  rivals.  The 
Gentrys  countermined  and  blew  "  all  sorts  of  stinking 
smudges  "  into  Yellow  Jacket  until  the  people  of  Vir 
ginia  protested  against  the  unendurable  odours  that 
filled  every  house  in  the  city. 


130  THE  STORY  0$  THE  MINI. 

One  of  the  most  famous  suits  of  the  period  was 
brought  by  the  heirs  and  old-time  backers  of  the  Grosh 
brothers,  who,,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  been  pros 
pecting  for  silver  and  had  organized  several  companies 
before  the  Gold  Hill  discovery.  The  shareholders  in 
these  forgotten  enterprises  now  formed  the  "  Grosh 
Gold  and  Silver  Mining  Company  "  and  claimed  3,750 
feet  in  the  best  part  of  the  Comstock.  Capitalized  at 
$5,000,000,  and  afterward  at  $10,000,000,  they  soon 
sold  enough  stock  to  make  a  long  and  brilliant  fight. 
The  Nevada  newspapers,  like  Silas  Wegg,  "  dropped 
into  rhyme  "  such  as  the  following: 

The  Ophir  on  the  Comstock 

Was  rich  as  bread  and  honey ; 
The  Gould  and  Curry,  farther  south, 

Was  raking  out  the  money ; 
The  Savage  and  the  others 

Had  machinery  all  complete, 
When  in  came  the  Groshes 

And  nipped  all  our  feet. 

After  long  and  costly  litigation  the  heirs  of  the 
Grosh  brothers  failed  to  secure  any  foothold,  and  so 
dropped  into  oblivion. 

Another  most  difficult,  protracted,  and  expensive 
mining  suit  was  between  the  famous  Billy  Chollar  and 
the  Potosi  (pronounced  by  old  Comstock  Potosee).  The 
Chollar  Company,  after  a  long  series  of  minor  difficul 
ties  with  the  adjoining  claim  (Potosi),  claimed  that 
theirs  was  the  original  ledge,  and  brought  suit  to  "  re 
cover  possession  of  a  surface  claim  four  hundred  feet 
wide  and  fourteen  hundred  feet  long,"  including,  of 
course,  a  large  part  of  the  Comstock  lode  with  the  in 
evitable  "dips,  spurs,  and  angles."  The  companies 
fairly  locked  horns  over  this  difficulty  in  1861,  and 


MINING  LITIGATION. 

spent  about  a  million  and  a  half  before  they  concluded 
to  unite  their  shattered  fortunes  in  the  great  Chollar- 
Potosi. 

When  this  suit  was  brought,  Judge  Mott,  who  was 
on  the  bench  of  the  First  Territorial  District,  favoured 
the  Chollar  side  in  their  geological  theory  that  the 
Comstock  was  only  an  offshoot  from  their  vein.  Mott, 
to  quote  from  Bancroft,  "  was  therefore  bribed  or  wor 
ried  into  resigning."  The  new  incumbent,  Judge 
North,  finally  decided  in  favour  of  the  Potosi  crowd. 
North  was  soon  afterward  forced  to  resign  "  to  avoid 
the  scandal  of  which  he  was  the  subject."  Chief- 
Justice  Turner  was  persuaded  to  follow  his  example, 
and  finally  the  members  of  the  bar  asked  the  one  re 
maining  judge  to  resign,  which  he  did.  Both  sides  had 
received  conflicting  decisions  in  the  course  of  this  piti 
able  affair,  but  neither  side,  as  it  turned  out,  felt  will 
ing  to  have  their  methods  of  conducting  litigation  made 
public,  and  so,  as  I  have  said,  the  companies  consoli 
dated. 

The  great  fight,  however,  unique  in  many  respects 
among  mining  suits,  was  that  instituted  at  a  very  early 
date  by  Burning  Moscow  against  Ophir.  The  new 
company,  under  the  title  of  "Burning  Mosca  Ledge 
Lucky  Co.,"  claimed,  in  April,  1860,  2,400  feet  "  west 
of  Virginia  City,  between  the  Central  and  Virginia 
ledges."  Their  ledge  was  said  to  be  distinct  from  that 
of  the  Ophir,  and  to  be  "twenty-three  feet  wide  in 
good  ore."  The  stock  was  "  boomed  "  in  San  Fran 
cisco,  and  soon  the  company  had  the  sinews  of  war 
and  came  to  the  front  in  support  of  the  favourite  many- 
ledge  theory  as  against  the  belief  that  ledges  a  mile 
away  sprang  from  the  roots  of  the  Comstock  and  would 
eventually  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  "only  original 
Jacobs,"  the  first  line  of  locators. 
10 


132  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Burning  Moscow  made  an  assault  with  terrible 
effect.  All  the  wheels  of  the  courts  were  set  in  motion. 
Ophir  began  buying  out  interests  in  other  claims  on 
the  rival  lode.  The  Garrison  Company  also  brought 
suit  against  Ophir;  the  Whitbeck  Company  did  the 
same,  and  the  McCall  Company  followed,  until  Ophir 
purchased  all  their  claims,  which  were  on  three  so- 
called  ledges  lying  within  fifteen  hundred  feet  of  each 
other.  Old  Virginia  made  his  last  public  appearance 
in  connection  with  these  Ophir  purchases.  Some  of 
the  claims  they  secured  depended  upon  the  original 
notice  of  location.  Finney  would  not  or  could  not  find 
it  until  the  superintendent  of  Ophir  persuaded  him 
into  a  tunnel  and  locked  an  iron  gate  upon  him.  In 
the  morning  he  was  sober  and  willing  to  produce  the 
notice.  He  went  to  the  disputed  ledge,  pried  off  a 
weather-beaten  slab,  and  found  a  yellow  paper,  the 
original  location  notice  that  he  had  put  there  in  1858. 

Burning  Moscow,  whose  location  was  disputed  in 
a  similar  manner  by  claims  on  sub-ledges,  consolidated 
about  this  time  with  its  several  tormentors,  increased 
its  capital  stock  from  half  a  million  to  three  million 
dollars,  and  returned  with  multiplied  energy  to  the 
assault  upon  Ophir.  California  and  Nevada  courts 
were  shaken  by  the  tumult  of  the  struggle.  The  first 
onslaught  of  the  Moscow  supporters  had  lasted  for  two 
years,  and  the  second  lasted  quite  as  long.  The  pioneer 
Comstockers  were  again  and  again  questioned  and 
cross-questioned,  until  the  little  that  they  knew  was 
inextricably  confused  with  the  host  of  mining  romances 
of  the  period.  Some  of  them  fairly  lived  on  witness 
fees.  The  district  record  book  was  made  to  uphold 
each  theory  by  turn.  Meanwhile  the  real  question 
in  dispute  could  not  be  determined  except  by  actual 
exploration. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  133 

Gradually  this  view  of  the  case  began  to  prevail. 
The  community  felt  that  the  development  of  the  dis 
trict  was  fatally  handicapped  by  such  gigantic  litiga 
tion.  Suddenly  Burning  Moscow  discovered  that  what 
ever  might  be  at  the  bottom  of  their  ledge,  the  top  was 
chiefly  lead  and  base  metal.  It  was  no  Comstock,  but 
contained  only  a  very  low-grade  ore  that  could  not  be 
milled  at  a  profit  after  a  few  surface  stringers  were 
mined  out.  Burning-Moscow  stock  fell  from  four  hun 
dred  dollars  to  five  dollars  a  foot,  and  Ophir  bought  the 
disputed  property.  First  and  last,  the  direct  expenses 
of  the  fight  had  been  more  than  a  million  dollars. 

The  mining  suits  which  have  been  briefly  described 
were  only  a  few  out  of  a  great  multitude.  In  1863 
some  thirty  cases,  involving  property  valued  at  fifty 
million  dollars,  were  in  the  district  courts.  "  We  had 
to  fight  fire  with  fire  in  those  days,"  said  an  old  Cali- 
fornian.  Men  who  saw  their  whole  fortunes  at  stake 
were  not  always  scrupulous  about  ways  and  means, 
and  their  active  agents  were  less  often  so.  The  atmos 
phere  in  which  these  interminable  litigations  were  car 
ried  on  became  heavier  and  blacker  every  year.  Pub 
lic  confidence  in  witnesses,  juries,  attorneys,  and  judges 
was  sorely  shaken.  The  Attorney-General  of  Nevada  in 
one  of  his  State  reports,  referring  to  the  period  under 
consideration,  said:  "  Chicanery  won  more  suits  than 
eloquence  and  learning,  and  corruption  more  than  solid 
merit."  Mne  tenths  of  the  voting  population  of  Storey 
County  once  signed  a  petition  asking  all  the  judges  to 
resign. 

Nevada's  peculiar  pre-eminence  in  the  matter  of 
litigation  from  1860  to  the  end  of  1865  is  clearly  ex 
hibited  by  the  Court  records  for  that  period.  Ophir 
was  in  thirty-seven  suits,  in  twenty-eight  of  which 
she  was  plaintiff.  Yellow  Jacket  came  next,  with 


134:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

thirty-two  suits,  being  plaintiff  in  twenty-four.  Sav 
age  was  nearly  as  litigious,  having  had  twenty-nine 
suits  and  acting  as  plaintiff  in  twenty-two.  Gould 
and  Curry  conies  next,  with  twenty-seven  suits,  twenty 
of  which  were  "  actions  brought."  Overman  had 
twenty-three  suits.  Eight  more  of  the  leading  Corn- 
stock  mines  of  the  period  under  consideration  (not 
including  Consolidated  Virginia,  California,  or  the  later 
combinations)  had  from  nine  to  seventeen  suits  apiece. 
The  total  for  twelve  mines  is  two  hundred  and  forty- 
five  lawsuits,  in  seventy-seven  of  which  the  companies 
named  were  defendants  and  in  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
eight  of  which  they  were  plaintiffs.  In  other  words, 
more  than  two  thirds  of  the  suits  were  to  dispossess 
the  claimants  of  ground  the  plaintiffs  considered  as 
belonging  to  the  Comstock  lode  under  the  single-ledge 
theory.  The  direct  cost  of  all  this  litigation  was  ten 
million  dollars — one  fifth  of  the  entire  product  of  the 
Comstock  during  that  period.  What  an  illustration  of 
the  wasteful  yet  magnificent  energy  of  the  early  Com- 
stockers  is  the  fact  that  this  heart-breaking  litigation 
began  almost  as  soon  as  the  discovery  of  silver  was  made, 
and  rose  to  its  greatest  developments  at  the  same  time 
with  the  gigantic  mechanical  achievements  and  the 
vast  underground  works  of  the  epoch!  Five  of  those 
Nevada  years  were  the  equivalent  of  half  a  century 
of  every-day  life  and  of  ordinary  enterprises. 

Great  were  the  legal  intellects  that  were  at  the  dis 
posal  of  the  mining  hosts  fighting  so  steadily  for  con 
trol  of  what  began  to  be  called  on  the  Pacific  coast  the 
"  Treasure-house  of  the  World."  Some  of  the  famous 
cases  were  tried  in  San  Francisco,  where  the  leading 
companies  soon  had  their  places  of  business;  but  Vir 
ginia  City  and  (after  the  admission  of  Nevada  in  1864) 
Carson,  the  State  capital,  were  the  principal  battle 


MINING  LITIGATION.  135 

grounds.  The  leading  Comstock  lawyers  became  fa 
mous  throughout  the  United  States.  Young  attorneys 
trained  on  the  Comstock  followed  the  prospector,  the 
miner,  the  mill  owner,  and  the  freighter  to  camp  after 
camp  in  the  desert  and  the  high  Rockies  till  the  prin 
ciples  of  American  mining  law  were  expounded  in 
Dead-Sea  hollows  below  the  ocean  level,  and  in  clusters 
of  pioneer  cabins  above  the  clouds,  ten  thousand  feet 
higher  than  the  ocean  floor,  in  the  Alps  of  Colorado. 
William  M.  Stewart,  the  "  old  invincible/'  tireless  in 
devotion,  incapable  of  fatigue,  master  of  mining-camp 
juries,  received  from  Belcher  $165,000  and  from  Yellow 
Jacket  $30,000  as  single  fees.  His  professional  income 
during  the  years  of  litigation  was  $200,000  a  year. 
General  Thomas  H.  Williams  made  four  million  dollars 
from  mining  property  deeded  to  him  as  fees  for  his 
legal  services. 


CHAPTEE  XIV. 

STOCK  AND   THE   STOCK   SPECULATOES. 

IN  these  days  nine  men  out  of  ten  know  something 
about  mining  stocks  and  methods  of  dealing  in  them. 
At  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  the  Comstock  there 
was  no  such  thing  on  the  Pacific  coast  as  a  stock  and 
exchange  board  where  shares  in  mines  or  companies 
could  be  listed  and  transferred.  But  the  people  of  the 
entire  Pacific  coast  were  highly  prosperous  and  ready 
for  speculative  investment.  There  were  few  manu 
factures,  so  that  real  estate  and  mines  offered  almost 
the  only  opportunities.  The  invention  of  methods  by 
which  the  dollars  of  the  servant  girl  and  the  farm 
labourer  could  be  used  to  speculate  with  suited  all 
classes  alike.  Assessments  furnished  the  impetus  that 
carried  the  Comstock  mines  safely  over  periods  of  de 
pression. 

Men  were  trading  and  selling  not  shares,  but  feet 
and  inches,  on  the  various  ledges  of  the  Comstock 
group  all  through  the  eventful  summer  of  1859.  The 
first  trouble  was  that  no  one  had  any  cash,  excepting 
a  few  newly  arrived  Californians.  The  second  trouble 
was  that  nothing  was  developed  sufficiently  to  show 
other  than  a  speculative  value,  even  on  the  main  Com 
stock  lode.  Buying  such  property  seemed  to  cautious 
men  the  wildest  of  gambles,  even  at  absurdly  low  prices. 
Prospectors  and  speculators  were  staking  out  the  coun 
try  for  miles  around.  There  were  times  when,  if  quartz 

136 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     137 

ledges  could  be  supposed  to  take  a  personal  interest 
in  their  fortunes,  the  Comstock  would  have  been  seen 
to  stand  abashed,  flushing  with  indignation  at  the  way 
in  which  its  sworn  lovers  were  flirting  with  base-metal 
outcroppings  in  the  sage  brush  and  deserts. 

One  will  fail  to  appreciate  the  completeness  with 
which  the  Pacific  coast  became  in  a  day  captive  to  sil 
ver  unless  he  accepts  the  great  rush  to  Washoe  as  mere 
ly  the  outward  and  visible  symbol  of  things  spiritual 
and  intellectual.  Men,  women,  and  children  yielded 
gladly  to  the  spell — the  story  of  another  Peru,  and 
the  eager  silver  hunters  were  met  on  the  summits  of 
the  Sierras  by  ragged,  hungry,  but  desperately  happy 
prospectors  who  told  them  that  Washoe  was  richer 
than  their  dreams  had  pictured  it,  and  who  offered 
them  mining  feet  in  claims  here,  there,  and  everywhere 
for  a  few  dollars. 

"The  truth  is,"  they  whispered  to  the  incoming 
Calif ornians — "  the  truth  is  that  I  am  dead  broke,  but 
I  have  a  fortune  sufficient  for  any  man  in  even  the  poor 
est  of  these  claims  which  I  have  taken  up  or  traded  for. 
Five  feet  is  enough  to  make  a  man  rich,  and  if  you  can 
not  take  more,  take  five  feet,  it  makes  no  difference 
where,  at  ten  dollars  a  foot."  Then  they  showed  speci 
mens  so  rich,  black,  and  heavy  that  the  Californians 
held  their  breath  with  envy,  and,  whether  they  bought 
or  not,  hastened  on  with  redoubled  energies.  There 
was  something  wonderfully  childlike  and  confiding 
about  the  bargains  and  transfers  often  made  after  pre 
cisely  this  manner  in  the  Sierra  passes  between  entire 
strangers. 

In  a  few  months  the  professional  speculator,  "  the 
man  who  worked  claims  with  his  jaw  instead  of  his 
pick "  (to  quote  a  common  Washoe  sentiment),  was 
to  be  seen  everywhere.  Such  men  "huddled  about 


138  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

corners  of  Virginia  City  consulting  in  low  tones  about 
various  claims  "  ;  they  straggled  in  from  the  Flowery 
diggings  or  other  supposedly  rich  places  with  speci 
mens  in  their  hands,  "  offering  bargains,"  as  Ross 
Browne  writes,  "  in  the  Eogers,  the  Lady  Bryant,  the 
Mammoth,  the  Woolly  Horse,  and  Heaven  knows  how 
many  other  valuable  leads,  at  prices  varying  from  ten 
to  seventy-five  dollars  a  foot."  The  old,  old  games, 
as  ancient  as  human  capacity  for  swindling  and  being 
swindled,  were  everywhere  in  full  operation,  though 
no  one  as  yet  called  the  process  "  dealing  in  stocks." 
They  were  "  bucking  and  bearing  "  (the  term  "  bull " 
was  not  then  known  on  the  Comstock).  They  were 
"  trading  claims."  They  were  "  stuffing  each  other  " 
after  every  conceivable  manner  and  diligently  blowing 
"  Washoe  bubbles."  Mad  speculation  was  everywhere, 
but  no  money  was  to  be  seen  except  in  gambling  rooms 
and  saloons.  Silver  was  everywhere  underground,  if 
reports  could  be  credited;  lawsuits,  deeds,  mortgages, 
and  agreements  to  transfer  everything  on  top  of  the 
earth  or  within  it  were  as  thick  as  autumn  leaves  and 
hardly  as  durable.  Everybody  was  a  billionaire  in 
silver-claim  inches,  feet,  yards,  and  rods,  "including 
dips,  spurs,  and  angles,"  from  the  top  of  Mount  David 
son  to  the  bottom  of — Devil's  Gate. 

Ross  Browne,  whose  genius  caught  many  a  glimpse 
in  the  rapidly  turning  kaleidoscope  of  the  Comstock, 
remains  our  best  guide  through  the  "  horrible  confusion 
of  tongues,"  the  crowds  of  roaring,  raving  drunkards, 
"  swilling  fiery  liquids  from  morning  to  night "  ;  the 
"  flaring  and  flaunting  gambling  saloons  "  ;  the  "  tor 
rents  of  imprecations "  ;  the  feverish,  unhallowed 
thirst  for  gain;  the  crowds  of  crazy-looking  wretches 
running  hither  and  thither,  hurrying  to  assay  offices, 
pulling  out  papers,  exchanging  mysterious  signals — 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     139 

these  Washoe  millionaires  with  their  outcroppings  and 
indications  from  the  "  Wake-Up  Jake/'  "  Eoot  Hog  or 
Die/'  "  Wild  Cat/'  "  Dry-Up/'  <  Grizzly-Hill/'  «  Same- 
Horse/'  "  Let-Her-Kip,"  "Yon-Bet,"  "Gouge-Eye," 
and  other  famous  ledges  and  companies.  All  night  long, 
as  Browne  elsewhere  reports,  these  fiendish  noises  con 
tended,  and  his  ears  were  overwhelmed  with  unintelli 
gible  jargonings  and  the  difficult  slang  of  the  new  min 
ing  camp.  He  tried  one  night  to  sleep  at  "  Zip's/' 
where  twenty  bunks  were  in  the  room,  and  found  that 
every  inmate  except  himself  was  bent  on  passing  the 
entire  night  trading  and  transferring  claims  in  the 
midst  of  shouting  and  universal  pandemonium.  He 
and  the  late  Henry  De  Groot  fled  for  refuge  to  a  hole 
in  the  hillside  and  wrote  letters  to  the  New  York  Times 
and  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin  describing  in  most  real 
istic  language  the  strange  scenes  about  them. 

What  most  surprised  and  often  shocked  the  visitor 
was  the  fact  that  all  this  turmoil,  this  restless  con 
course  of  amateur  stockbrokers  and  new-fledged  specu 
lators  whose  ranks  increased  daily,  this  howling  and 
perennial  insanity,  occurred  in  a  frontier  camp  in  the 
midst  of  noble  mountains  where  only  a  short  time 
before  the  profound  peace  of  an  untroubled  wilder 
ness  had  reigned  supreme.  One  writer  suggested  that 
if  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  should  hold  its  meet 
ings  on  the  top  of  Mount  Eigi  the  scene  would  be  paral 
leled,  but  in  many  respects  it  was  a  situation  that  was 
entirely  new  .to  the  history  of  speculation  in  America, 
and  the  strangely  mingled  Comstock  crowd  of  1860 
was  certainly  more  wildly  picturesque  on  the  windy 
flank  of  Mount  Davidson  than  even  the  most  turbulent 
of  well-dressed  New  York  brokers  and  speculators.  As 
they  swayed  through  alleys  between  flapping  canvas 
tents  they  seemed  the  chattering,  half-dazed,  wild- 


140  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

eyed  survivors  of  all  nations  and  races  thrown  shattered 
and  homeless  into  the  desert  after  some  vast  world 
catastrophe  that  had  erased  from  existence  everything 
except  the  wealth  passion  and  the  ledges  of  Washoe. 

But  prices  of  mining  claims  could  not  rise  forever. 
"With  drastic  sarcasm  an  "  old  resident  of  Washoe," 
who  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  late  J.  W.  Simon- 
ton,  one  of  the  owners  of  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin, 
described  the  situation  in  May,  1860:  "We  are  in 
formed  that  there  is  a  panic  in  San  Francisco  in  rela 
tion  to  our  mining  stocks;  that  nothing  will  sell;  that 
even  Ophir,  Washoe,  Chollar,  and  Corsair  are  drugs 
in  the  market;  that  banks  won't  discount  Washoe  specu 
lators'  paper;  that  Lady  Bryan  sells  for  fifteen  dollars 
and  Eogers  for  forty  dollars;  that  the  bottom  has  fallen 
out.  Two  months  ago,"  he  continues,  "  these  wise 
men  of  Gotham  went  to  sea  in  a  bowl  and  got  badly 
wet.  Two  months  ago  everything  would  sell.  People 
bought  blindly  in  the  Bob  Eidley,  Last  Chance,  and 
Bob-Tail  Nag.  Where  they  were  located,  what  was 
the  character  of  the  rock,  who  were  the  locators,  and 
what  the  title,  were  not  matters  of  inquiry.  Fools  at 
your  end  of  the  telegraph  were  deceived  by  knaves  at 
our  end;  we  sent  to  you  mysterious  hints  of  new  discov 
eries  that  never  existed,  strikes  in  mines  never  located, 
accounts  of  sales  that  never  took  place.  Your  prudent 
men  who  would  not  buy  a  foot  of  land  in  San  Fran 
cisco  or  make  a  loan  without  careful  search  of  title  have 
risked  thousands  without  a  thought.  Your  greedy 
folly  was  taken  advantage  of  by  our  avarice;  you  be 
came  the  victims  of  your  own  sublime  stupidity  and 
dishonesty." 

A  conservative  estimate  made  in  1860  placed  the 
number  of  claims  located,  interests  in  which  were  in 
most  cases  on  the  market,  as  five  thousand  within  a 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.  141 

radius  of  thirty  miles  from  Virginia  City!  Only  three 
hundred  of  these  claims  were  ever  opened  at  all,  and 
only  twenty  were  considered  by  careful  outsiders  as 
"  thoroughly  well  established  mines."  Time  was  to 
show  that  only  eight  or  nine  of  the  twenty  which  were 
considered  absolutely  certain  investments  were  to  pay 
dividends.  The  majority  of  these  five  thousand  claims 
lay  forever  idle.  One  would  not  have  known  that  they 
were  called  mines  except  for  an  occasional  claim  stake 
or  a  fluttering,  badly  spelled  notice  on  "  indications  " 
which  were  seldom  attractive  to  competent  mineralo 
gists.  Iron  pyrites  and  all  sorts  of  worthless  metals 
were  as  good  as  gold  and  silver  to  the  enterprising  ad 
venturers.  Gopher,  squirrel,  and  coyote  holes  fur 
nished  indications  on  the  strength  of  which  claims 
were  laid  out.  Ignorant  and  plausible  speculators 
with  a  smattering  of  geology  added  to  the  confusion. 
Before  long  men  were  claiming  to  have  ledges  of  ind 
ium,  platinum,  plumbago,  and  various  other  valu 
able  substances.  One  Washoe  prospector  being  in 
formed  by  a  San  Francisco  man  that  he  wanted  an 
ambergris  mine,  replied  that  he  had  one  already  staked 
out  and  for  sale.  A  group  of  men  under  direction  of 
the  "  spirits  "  tunnelled  for  weeks  into  the  granite  of 
Mount  Davidson  in  order  to  tap  an  alleged  lake  of 
coal  oil. 

Besides  the  five  thousand  actual  claims  there  were 
many  more  prospect  holes  a  few  feet  across — mere 
ragged  pits  or  cuts  in  the  yellow  sand,  clay,  or  rocks 
of  the  barren  hillsides.  Prospect  holes,  too,  were  about 
all  that  one  could  see  on  the  vast  majority  of  claims 
already  held.  They  dotted  the  whole  region  in  wind 
blown  heaps  and  hollows  between  dismal  clumps  of 
sage  brush  and  the  dull  yellow  of  coarse  sunflowers 
that  occasionally  bloomed  in  the  freshly  broken  slopes. 


14:2  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE, 

This  was  the  sort  of  thing,  for  the  most  part,  that  the 
staid  old  merchants  of  San  Francisco  and  Sacramento 
had  been  fighting  over  in  the  spring  of  1860!  Vir 
ginia  City  and  Gold  Hill  record  books  show  that  nearly 
sixteen  thousand  claims  were  recorded  in  those  dis 
tricts  in  the  twenty  years  after  1859. 

Donald  Davidson,  the  first  ore  buyer  on  the  Com- 
stock,  was  soon  introduced  to  one  of  the  favourite  jokes 
of  the  fun-loving  miners  who  were  quite  well  aware 
of  the  innate  absurdity  of  claim-staking  the  whole  of 
Nevada.  After  he  had  agreed  to  buy  two  hundred 
tons  of  selected  Ophir  ore  at  two  hundred  dollars  a  ton 
and  to  ship  it  at  his  own  expense  per  Carson  mule  fast- 
freight  train,  the  miners  celebrated  the  important 
event  by  a  trip  to  the  top  of  "  Sun  Peak,"  which  then 
and  there  was  rebaptized  Mount  Davidson.  They 
showed  the  honest  old  Scotchman  dozens  of  quartz 
veins  on  the  way  up,  and  told  him  they  were  fairly  run 
ning  over  with  richness.  After  their  return  in  the 
evening  they  proposed  to  locate  claims  on  these  new 
ledges  for  the  banker  and  all  his  personal  friends.  The 
recorder  was  called  in,  and  Davidson  gladly  put  up 
fifty  cents  apiece  for  some  twenty-five  claims  in  the 
granite  masses  of  the  grand  old  mountain.  Then  the 
jovial  recorder  suddenly  invited  the  crowd  to  aid  him 
in  the  liquid  transmutation  of  some  of  the  Davidsonian 
gold. 

Throughout  the  entire  period  of  stock  speculation, 
in  all  its  ebbs  and  flows  here  and  elsewhere  as  well, 
every  student  is  surprised  at  the  fewness  of  the  paying 
mines  and  at  the  number  that  hang  helplessly  upon 
reputations  made  for  the  various  districts  by  one  or  two 
magnificent  properties  in  each.  The  bullion  reports 
from  these  stir  the  pulses  of  investors  and  speculators 
alike,  and  they  often  pour  successive  assessments  into 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     143 

worthless  and  barren  places  for  years.  The  sum  total  of 
the  dead- work  of  the  Comstock  period  is  almost  incalcu 
lable.  Men  of  large  capital  and  the  millions  with  their 
small  savings  united  to  explore  the  ledges  of  Nevada 
at  an  enormous  expense,  and  often  upon  entirely  un 
profitable  mines,  or  rather  not — mines.  To  individual 
ize  these  cases  of  profligate  outlay,  writes  one  of  the 
old  Virginia  City  editors,  "  would  be  simply  to  cata 
logue  the  leading  enterprises  carried  on  during  this 
epoch  of  prodigality  and  mistake."  Ten  million  dol 
lars  was  spent  in  sinking  shafts  and  running  drifts 
about  Virginia  City  without  finding  a  single  large  and 
lucrative  mine. 

There  are  the  forgotten  Palmyra  and  Indian  Spring 
districts  in  Pine  Nut  Eange  where  two  pretty  little 
towns  once  stood,  but  now  only  the  graveyards  remain. 
There  is  that  Nevadan  Golgotha  of  speculators,  Es- 
meralda,  where  millions  of  dollars  were  wasted.  Be 
yond,  toward  the  Humboldt,  in  range  after  range  of 
bleak,  desolate  mountains,  or  in  the  tawny  desert,  are 
the  ruins  of  abortive  mining  enterprises.  In  every 
direction — east,  west,  north,  south — credulous  stock 
holders  staked  and  lost  vast  sums  of  money  before  the 
close  of  the  '60's.  Over  in  the  lava  of  Pine  Woods  dis 
trict  in  1863  some  Virginia  City  men  sold  a  group  of 
mythical  mines  and  received  a  very  large  payment 
down.  The  New  York  buyers  spent  another  fortune 
and  departed,  leaving  the  holes  in  the  desert.  Every 
where,  for  hundred  of  miles,  on  steep  ranges,  in  sandy 
wastes,  money  was  spent  without  stint  upon  misguided 
and  foolish  mining  enterprises,  supported  almost  al 
ways  by  associations  and  companies.  Said  Dr.  De 
Groot,  who  had  visited  nearly  every  camp  on  the  Pacific 
coast,  "  That's  the  dilapidated  mill  of  the  Let-Her-Eip  " 
— and,  true  to  its  name,  it  burst  the  financial  integu- 


144  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

merits  of  every  stockholder.  "  I  haven't  time,"  he  con 
tinues,  "to  relate  the  story  of  the  'Wild  Emigrant/ 
the  '  Shamrock/  the  '  Silver  Lyre/  the  i  Pungle- 
Down/  "  and  he  makes  passing  mention  of  many  other 
wildcats  and  abandoned  districts  of  the  '60's,  such  as 
the  "  Lunar  Rainbow/'  the  "  Bloody  Thunder/'  and  the 
countless  host  of  unproductive  mines  in  Cortez,  Silver 
Bend,  Reveille,  Pahranagat,  and  classic  White  Pine. 

Later  came  others,  dragging  luckless  speculators 
down  the  paths  of  ruin — barren  Panamint,  on  the  edge 
of  the  terrible  Death  Valley;  Marietta,  in  the  Excelsior 
Mountains,  where  the  whole  deserted  town  still  lies 
bleaching  in  the  sun;  emptied,  ghostly  camps  by  the 
score,  dead,  unburied,  weighted  down  by  human  curses. 
Each  one  of  them  was  hailed  in  its  day  as  a  new  and 
greater  Comstock;  each  one  in  its  fall  destroyed  homes 
and  made  suicides.  The  smallest  and  most  ephemeral 
of  them  all  has  had  a  history  which,  had  it  occurred  in 
some  staid  farming  community,  would  have  made  the 
place  memorable  as  the  scene  of  an  awful  disaster.  But, 
spread  widely  over  time  and  space,  the  ruin  that  fol 
lows  the  failure  of  a  promising  camp  is  difficult  to  trace 
or  measure,  especially  in  these  lesser  instances.  The 
Amazonian  current  of  Comstock  speculation  sweeps  far 
out  into  the  ocean  of  human  life,  strewn  with  its  multi 
tudinous  social  wrecks,  and  it  still  remains  the  pre 
eminent  type  of  its  class. 

As  time  passed,  mining  stocks  became  more  and 
more  the  typical  and  most  popular  form  of  speculation 
in  California  and  Nevada;  often  the  whole  community 
seemed  to  be  dealing  in  them.  There  have  been  periods 
when  leading  brands  of  goods  have  been  named  after 
favourite  mines,  when  streets,  squares,  parks,  and  chil 
dren  were  christened  in  the  same  way,  and  when  the 
slang  of  the  mining  market  was  used  by  every  class  of 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     145 

society  and  in  every  learned  profession.  The  bar 
keeper  mixed  "bonanza"  drinks  and  talked  of  his 
stocks.  Boys  and  girls,  servants,  labourers,  mechanics, 
and  clerks  were  calculating  upon  gaining  fortunes  with 
their  little  savings.  All  classes  alike  helped  to  sustain 
the  stupendous  game  of  silver  mining  in  Nevada. 
"  The  market,"  said  the  Mining  Review  in  1870,  "  ex 
tends  everywhere;  the  buyers  and  sellers  of  stock  in 
clude  the  millionaire  and  the  mendicant,  the  modest 
matron  and  the  brazen  courtesan,  the  prudent  man  of 
business  and  the  gambler,  the  maidservant  and  her 
mistress,  the  banker  and  his  customer." 

The  whole  history  of  the  Comstock  lode  is  revealed 
in  the  assessments,  dividends,  and  fluctuations  of  the 
stocks  of  the  separate  mines.  There  every  consolida 
tion  of  interests,  every  lawsuit,  every  period  of  ex 
travagance  and  of  economy  is  written  so  that  he  who 
runs  may  read.  Before  the  end  of  1861  eighty-six  com 
panies  were  organized  and  working  the  Comstock  and 
adjacent  mines;  their  aggregate  capital  was  $61,500,- 
000.  Only  a  few  were  paying  at  the  time,  but  every 
one  fondly  believed  that  they  would  all  wheel  into  line 
before  long.  The  prodigality  that  followed  in  the  days 
of  the  earlier  bonanzas  was  partly  the  free-handed  lib 
erality  of  Californians  trained  in  the  schools  of  the 
placer  camps,  and  partly  the  unchecked  extravagance 
of  gambling  stockholders.  Gould  and  Curry,  a  mar 
vellously  rich  mine,  took  out  nearly  nine  million  dol 
lars  and  declared  $2,908,800  in  dividends  during  1863 
and  1864.  The  actual  investments  made  by  its  owners, 
who  bought  it  for  a  few  thousand  dollars,  had  been 
less  than  $200,000;  but  the  expenses  of  the  company 
during  that  two  years  was  close  upon  six  million  dol 
lars,  or  more  than  twice  the  dividends.  It  has  been 
reckoned  that  the  dividends  from  the  nearly  110,000 


146  ME  STOEY  OF  TfiE  MINE. 

tons  of  ore  milled  during  those  two  years  might  just 
as  well  have  been  four  and  a  half  millions,  as  less  than 
three  millions,  if  the  company  had  worked  all  its  ores 
in  its  own  mills  and  with  less  haste.  But,  as  the  presi 
dent  of  Gould  and  Curry  said,  "  every  stockholder 
wanted  it  snaked  out  at  once,  at  any  cost,  and  so  we 
wasted  a  third  of  our  profits.7' 

The  first  great  depression  in  mining  stocks  (after 
they  had  any  commercial  value  at  all)  began  as  soon 
as  the  rich  ore  chutes  near  the  surface  had  been  worked 
out  and  the  search  for  new  deposits  had  begun,  with 
consequent  assessments.  Shares  rained  on  the  market 
from  all  directions,  and  hundreds  of  prominent  men 
were  ruined.  Gould  and  Curry,  which  in  1863  sold 
at  $6,300  a  square  foot,  fell  to  $900  in  1864.  Ophir 
dropped  from  $1,580  to  $300.  Savage  went  down 
from  $2,600  to  $750.  Every  mine  on  the  Comstock 
suffered  in  a  similar  proportion,  and  the  "  wildcats  " 
of  the  outside  districts  were  "  out  of  sight,  under 
ground." 

While  the  leading  mines  were  drifting  for  more 
silver  along  the  east  wall,  some  directors,  who  desired 
to  keep  the  news  of  any  "  find  "  from  reaching  the  ears 
of  the  public,  conceived  the  idea  of  confining  miners 
to  the  mine  for  days  at  a  time.  They  received  the  best 
of  care  and  often  had  increased  wages.  In  1868  Hale 
&  Norcross  tried  the  experiment.  When  the  men  were 
released  the  superintendent  reported  a  strike,  and  the 
stock  rose  from  $1,300  to  $2,200,  though  the  mine  did 
not  justify  the  increase.  Speculators  soon  became  so 
suspicious  of  the  plan  that  the  stocks  of  a  mine  were 
quite  as  apt  to  fall  as  to  rise  when  the  miners  were  im 
prisoned. 

According  to  the  present  plan,  when  a  mine  reaches 
rich  pay-ore  the  superintendent,  who  has  long  watched 


STOCK  AttD  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS. 

the  process  of  the  work,  generally  knows  it  first.  The 
doors  of  the  building  over  the  mine  are  closed  and 
admittance  is  refused  to  all  outsiders,  even  to  reporters. 
Only  a  few  of  the  men  in  the  mine  have  had  a  chance 
to  find  out  anything,  because,  if  the  superintendent 
knows  his  business,  a  "  secret  shift "  has  done  all  the 
work  for  weeks  at  the  advanced  point  in  the  drifts 
where  ore  is  expected.  The  oldest  and  most  reliable 
miners  are  chosen  for  the  shift.  They  are  seldom 
ordered  in  set  terms  to  hold  their  tongues,  but  if  any 
thing  regarding  the  mine  gets  abroad  every  man  on 
the  shift  is  discharged.  The  truth  about  the  inside 
of  a  mine  can  seldom  be  obtained  from  a  miner  that 
works  there.  Loyalty  is  ingrained  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  man.  Though  nearly  every  miner  buys  stock,  and 
it  would  be  strange  if  he  did  not,  he  is  up  to  all  the 
points  of  the  game,  and  if  he  is  on  a  "  secret  shift "  can 
manage  to  conceal  his  information  from  the  shrewdest 
of  "  curbstones  brokers  "  or  mining  spies. 

Virginia  City  in  times  of  stock  excitement  was 
honeycombed  with  newspaper  reporters,  agents  of  deal 
ers,  and  outsiders  whose  business  it  was  to  obtain  by 
fair  means  or  foul  an  exact  knowledge  of  the  condition, 
present  and  prospective,  of  the  Comstock  mines.  Every 
one  who  was  connected  with  the  suspected  mine  or 
mines  was  shadowed  as  closely  as  if  he  was  a  counter 
feiter.  A  Comstock  tradition  is  to  the  effect  that  on 
one  occasion  when  the  air  was  full  of  hints  of  a  strike, 
but  nothing  could  be  gleaned  in  any  direction,  a  shrewd 
mining  detective  hid  in  the  works,  saw  the  superin 
tendent  come  out  and  take  off  his  dirty  mining  clothes. 
He  slipped  in,  and  finally  managed  to  scrape  a  few 
ounces  of  dust  and  clay  from  boots  and  overalls.  This 
waste,  when  assayed,  showed  that  some  drift  the  super 
intendent  had  been  examining  was  in  a  new  and  very 
11 


148  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

rich  formation.  He  wired  his  backers  to  "  buy  hard/' 
and  they  made  vast  profits. 

During  every  great  stock  excitement  the  mining 
towns  themselves  are  loud-buzzing  beehives,  sending 
out  the  latest  news,  buying  and  selling  stocks  with 
feverish  haste.  In  Virginia  City  as  well  as  in  San 
Francisco  at  such  seasons  fortunes  have  been  made  and 
lost  in  an  hour.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  people  behave 
when  stocks  start  upward  again.  Those  who  lost  in 
the  previous  spurts  remark  calmly  to  their  friends: 
"  Now  this  time  I  shall  sell  at  a  fair  profit;  let  the  other 
fellow  make  somthing  too."  Pretty  soon  stocks  jump 
a  little  higher.  "  Now  when  I  can  double  my  money, 
off  I  go  for  a  vacation."  Then  stocks  fall  off  a  few 
points,  "  get  soft,"  then  harden,  then  "  run  again 
softer."  "  Some  one  has  been  telegraphing  lies  about 
the  mine  to  San  Francisco,"  says  our  friend.  But  mat 
ters  grow  worse,  the  holders  are  called  upon  to  make 
good  their  bargains,  and  the  boom  ends  in  a  crash,  with 
our  luckless  friend  still  holding  his  shares. 

In  Dan  De  Quille's  Big  Bonanza  is  a  letter  said  to 
have  been  received  in  Virginia  City  from  a  Frenchman 
who  had  become  acquainted  with  the  meaning  of  the 
term  "mud,"  and  I  quote  a  portion:  "By  zee  advice 
of  our  goot  friend,"  as  the  inquirer  stated,  "  I  have 
procured  some  time  past  on  what  you  call (  on  zee  time  ' 
many  shares  of  zee  Bobtaile.  He,  mine  friend  who 
repose  on  zee  inside,  express  himself  of  zee  mine  wis 
moche  enthusiasme.  Zee  mine  be  one  merveille  de  la 
nature;  zee  works  un  chef-d'ceuvre  de  Part.  But  now, 
pretty  soon — le  diable!  Zee  brokaire  man  use  zee  ex 
pression  to  me  as  follows:  '  more  mud/  So  many,  five, 
seex  time  have  he,  zee  brokaire,  desire  of  me  some  leetle 
more  mud  that  now  I  mus  make  one  gran  sacrifice 
pecuniare.  It  be  now  become  scandaleuse.  Pretty 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     149 

soon  you  have  one  crash  financial — I  gone  bust — me. 
I  be  ver  moche  perplex  wis  zee  stroke  of  prices.  He 
viggle  up,  he  viggle  down,  all  zee  time.  Will  you  have 
ze  complaisance  to  inform  me  how  soon  he  will  viggle 
high  up,  an  remain  to  pass  some  time  up  dare?  " 

In  order  to  illustrate  more  forcibly  the  fluctuations 
of  the  stock  market  during  the  ten  years  following 
1867,  I  have  gathered  the  following  notes  upon  two 
typical  mines  from  the  commercial  columns  of  the  San 
Francisco  newspapers: 

Alpha,  an  assessment  mine,  sold  for  $1,570  in 
February,  1868,  fell  to  $33  in  September,  rose  to  $62 
in  February,  1869,  sank  to  $11  in  October,  rose  to  $21 
in  March,  1870,  sank  to  $3  in  September,  rose  to  $20 
in  September,  1871,  and  to  $240  in  April,  1872,  then 
sank  to  $15  in  July,  1873,  and  rose  again  to  $100  in 
September;  in  February,  1874,  sank  to  $9,  rose  to  $45 
in  June,  1875,  and  sank  to  $3  the  same  month;  in 
May,  1876,  it  rose  to  $67,  and  sank  in  December  to 
$18;  in  1877  it  fluctuated  between  $5  and  $23.  Alpha, 
with  30,000  shares,  levied  $330,000  in  assessments  up 
to  1880,  and  has  never  declared  a  dividend. 

Belcher,  unlike  Alpha,  was  a  great  dividend  pro 
ducer,  one  of  the  three  leading  mines  of  the  period, 
having  paid  in  thirty-eight  dividends  up  to  1880  nearly 
sixteen  million  dollars,  with  assessments  of  less  than 
two  millions.  It  had  104,000  shares  after  1869  (1,100 
to  the  foot).  The  price  of  the  stock  sank  from  $430 
in  April,  1868,  to  $110  in  July.  Then,  the  capital 
stock  being  largely  increased,  the  price  per  share  be 
came  proportionately  less.  In  1869  prices  ranged  from 
$12  to  $35;  in  1870  sank  from  $35  to  $1;  rose  to  $6 
in  January,  1871,  and  to  $450  in  December;  sank  to 
$6  in  January,  1872,  rose  again  to  $1,525  in  April, 
fluctuating  all  that  summer,  down  to  $1.50,  up  to  $95, 


150  ME  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

down  to  $9,  and  so  on.  In  1873  there  were  again  great 
variations;  the  stock  sold  down  to  25  cents  a  share  and 
up  to  $113  with  many  surprising  eddies,  going  down  to 
$1.50  in  August,  and  then  rallying  until  in  January, 
1874,  it  was  at  $120,  breaking  by  November  to  $42. 

It  would  be  easy  to  go  on  with  these  comparisons 
from  which  an  instructive  chart  might  be  constructed  to 
exhibit  the  rise  and  fall  of  stock  values.  For  the  pur 
poses  of  speculation,  the  mines  that  did  not  pay  any 
dividends  were  often  exactly  as  good  as  those  that  did 
pay.  This  was  fortunate  for  the  stock  owners  and  for 
the  miners,  mill  men,  superintendents,  and  all  who 
made  a  living  from  the  business,  either  directly  or  in 
directly.  Out  of  one  hundred  and  three  Washoe  min 
ing  companies  reported  and  regularly  listed,  only  four 
teen  paid  any  dividends  at  all,  and  only  six  of  these 
paid  more  dividends  than  assessments.  The  six  were 
Consolidated  Virginia,  California,  Belcher,  Crown 
Point,  Gould  and  Curry,  and  Kentuck. 

Some  of  the  assessments  paid  upon  mines  that 
never  yielded  a  profit  and  paid  unflinchingly  for  years 
by  successive  legions  of  stockholders  were  unparalleled 
in  mining  history.  Alta  put  in  $1,317,600;  Baltimore 
Consolidated,  $1,015,000;  Bullion,  $3,352,000;  Cale 
donia,  $1,935,000;  Consolidated  Imperial,  $1,125,000; 
Justice,  $3,230,000;  Mexican,  $1,243,000;  New  York, 
$900,000;  Overman,  $3,162,800;  Silver  Hill,  $1,620,- 
000;  Utah,  $1,030,000.  Here  were  ten  mines  that 
sank  in  assessment  work  nearly  seventeen  million  dol 
lars,  while  many  other  mines  that  paid  some  dividends 
lost  very  large  sums:  in  the  case  of  Yellow  Jacket, 
$2,454,000;  and  of  Sierra  Nevada,  $3,747,500.  Hun 
dreds  of  thousands  of  investors  in  every  part  of  the  civi 
lized  world  have  reason  to  remember  one  or  another 
of  this  list  of  non-producers. 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.  151 

It  has  been  estimated  by  many  writers  that  if  the 
highest  price  be  taken  which  each  mine  at  one  time 
or  another  has  brought  (as  figured  out  from  the  number 
of  shares  and  the  stock-board  maximum)  the  Comstock 
has  cost  $700,000,000,  but  there  never  was  a  single 
time  when  the  entire  lode,  even  in  the  stock  market, 
was  being  sold  at  this  valuation.  The  only  possible 
way  of  estimating  the  profits  of  a  mining  enterprise 
is  to  take  the  difference  between  the  total  yield  and  the 
total  expense.  The  currents,  undertows,  eddies,  whirl 
pools,  and  enormous  maelstroms  of  the  mining-stock 
markets  are  of  oceanic  vastness,  crowded  with  unfore 
seen  perils,  and  throbbing  with  immeasurable  energies, 
expressed  all  too  feebly  in  billion-dollar  estimates, 
but  the  actual  available  capital  of  the  stock  market 
is  many  times  less  than  its  fictitious  valuation.  If 
it  were  not  so  there  could  never  be  any  stock  market 
at  all. 

In  the  year  1877  the  total  sales  of  mining  shares 
on  the  three  San  Francisco  stock  boards  amounted  to 
very  nearly  $120,000,000.  This  was  two  years  later 
than  the  height  of  the  greatest  speculative  period  in  the 
history  of  the  lode,  and  may  serve  to  illustrate  what 
used  to  be  called  a  prosperous  year.  Without  some 
such  method  of  speculation  no  mine  that  did  not  pay 
its  expenses  from  the  start  could  ever  have  been  de 
veloped  except  by  wealthy  owners;  no  ten  or  a  hundred 
men  would  have  taken  the  risks  and  invested  the  capi 
tal  required  to  push  work  on  Comstock  mines  as  rapidly 
as  it  was  pushed  for  fifteen  or  eighteen  years  after  their 
location.  The  division  of  the  various  mining  interests 
into  hundreds  of  thousands  of  small  shares  gave  every 
one  an  opportunity  to  invest  in  the  game  of  chance. 
As  long  as  many  thousands  chose  to  invest,  the  high- 
pressure  system  continued. 


152  "THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Eeports  from  the  San  Francisco  boards  were  bul 
letined  in  Virginia  City  as  soon  as  received  in  times 
when  stocks  were  rushing  upward  like  auroras  or  fall 
ing  like  rocket  sticks.  Everybody  ran  to  see  them — • 
flour-dusted  bakers,  blacksmiths  with  sledge  hammers, 
white-aproned  butchers,  Jare-headed  clerks,  miners  on 
the  way  to  the  shafts,  a  teamster  "  thrusting  his  black- 
snake  under  the  housing  of  his  saddle  mule " — all 
hurrying  to  the  bulletin  boards  to  see  their  fates.  The 
streets  became  blocked  so  that  the  police  had  to  clear 
a  passage,  and  the  town  quivered  with  joy  or  sorrow 
with  each  change  in  the  figures.  Sometimes  a  long- 
drawn  sigh,  mysterious,  universal,  sought  expression  as 
values  slipped  away  down  to  the  depths. 

As  for  the  successful  mining  operator,  time  was 
when  he  was  the  most  aggressive  and  scintillant  figure 
in  the  social  and  business  worlds  of  the  Pacific  coast. 
Such  men  as  "  Jim  "  Keene,  "  Bill  »  Lent,  "  Johnny  " 
Skae,  General  Gashwiler,  and  others  still  remembered 
on  Pine  Street,  were  men  who  in  their  time  knew  every 
curve  and  twist  of  the  Comstock  market.  Hundreds 
of  others  linked  their  names  with  famous  mines  and 
with  thrilling  chapters  of  speculation.  Group  after 
group  rose  to  power,  ruled  after  their  kind,  and  fell 
from  authority.  Some  few  there  are  who  have  survived 
many  a  successive  dynasty  and  are  still  Eajahs  of  the 
White  Elephant.  In  flush  times  the  leaders  of  stock 
operations  were  known  by  their  purple  and  fine  linen, 
their  splendid  equipages  and  their  lavish  expenditures, 
generally  in  San  Francisco,  but  sometimes  in  a  trail 
of  corruscating  glory  across  the  continent.  But  every 
now  and  then  a  man  was  caught  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  market,  which  fluctuated  at  times  much  more  vio 
lently  than  anything  on  Wall  Street.  Down  he  went, 
down  and  under,  and  new  men  took  his  place.  Per- 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.      153 

haps  in  the  course  of  time,  soured  and  blunted  by  mis 
fortune,  the  unfortunate  operator  joined  the  ranks  of 
the  please-lend-me-a-dollar  denizens  of  Pauper  Alley,  a 
narrow  street  in  San  Francisco  between  Pine  and  Cali 
fornia,  where  the  hopeless  wrecks  of  forgotten  storms  of 
speculation  are  drifting  to  and  fro. 

There,  in  Pauper  Alley,  one  can  walk,  any  time  in 
business  hours,  and  see  creatures  that  once  were  million 
aires  and  leading  operators.  Now  they  live  by  free 
lunches  in  the  beer  cellars  and  on  stray  dimes  tossed  to 
them  "for  luck."  Women,  too,  form  a  part  of  the 
wretched  crowd  that  haunt  the  ends  of  the  Alley  where 
it  joins  its  more  prosperous  neighbour  streets  and  beg 
every  speculator  to  give  them  a  "  pointer  "  or  to  carry 
a  share  of  stock  for  them.  These  are  the  "  dead  mud- 
hens,"  as  the  men  are  the  "  dead  ducks,"  of  the  Corn- 
stock  share  gamblers.  Horrible  things  one  sees  and 
hears  of  here.  Old  friends  you  thought  were  pros 
perous  but  had  not  heard  of  for  years  shove  themselves 
out  of  the  huddle  and  beg  for  the  price  of  a  glass  of 
whisky.  There  stands  a  once-prosperous  printer,  in 
rags — he  took  flyers  on  the  street  too  many  times. 
Yonder  beggar  lost  $400,000  in  a  single  summer,  all 
good  gold.  The  ghost  of  many  a  murdered  happiness 
walks  unseen  among  these  half -insane  paupers  as  they 
chatter  like  apes  of  lost  fortunes  and  of  the  prospects 
of  their  favourite  stocks.  Eeally  it  is  a  frightful  thing 
to  walk  there  and  look  at  the  seamy  side  of  the  silken 
garment  of  fortune. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

BOKRASCA   AND   BONANZA. 

A  STUDENT  of  mining  interests  must  rise  to  a 
broader  view  than  that  suggested  by  the  artificial 
stimulus  of  the  stock  market.  It  is  something,  of 
course,  to  know  what  has  been  wasted  in  assessments, 
how  stocks  have  fluctuated,  and  what  fortunes  have 
been  gained  or  lost  therein.  But  it  is  in  every  respect 
more  important  to  observe  the  development  of  the 
mines  from  the  standpoint  of  legitimate  business  enter 
prises,  entirely  independent,  in  the  last  analysis,  of 
outside  gambling  elements.  Individuals  have  been 
impoverished,  but  has  the  Pacific  coast  and  the  world 
at  large  gained  or  lost  in  a  financial  sense  by  the  mil 
lions  spent  upon  the  Comstock? 

The  answer  is  given  in  official  records.  If  we  take 
the  summer  of  1859  as  the  starting  point  and  sum  up 
the  assessments  made  by  the  several  Comstock  com 
panies  for  twenty-one  years,  we  shall  arrive  at  the  grand 
total  of  $62,000,000,  according  to  Government  reports. 
Dividends  paid  during  the  same  period  aggregated 
$116,000,000,  and  to  this  the  statisticians  add  $2,- 
000,000  for  unreported  individual  profits  on  mines 
before  they  were  incorporated.  Striking  a  cash  bal 
ance,  the  Comstock  ledger  thus  exhibits  an  actual  profit 
of  $56,000,000.  In  round  numbers,  the  bullion  yield 
of  the  group  of  mines  for  the  same  period  was  valued 
at  $306,000,000.  Subtracting  the  profits,  we  have  as 

154 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.        155 

the  cost  of  the  purchasing,  maintaining,  defending, 
and  developing  the  great  lode  for  twenty-one  years, 
$250,000,000.  Three  fourths  of  this  sum,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten,  came  from  the  mines  themselves;  the 
other  fourth  was  the  result  of  direct  assessments  upon 
the  stockholders. 

Turning  to  consider  the  other  elements  of  cost, 
we  find  that  the  prospectors  and  original  locators  upon 
the  lode  received  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  dol 
lars  for  their  claims;  also  that  subsequent  owners  paid 
less  than  a  million  dollars  out  of  their  own  pockets 
as  "  working  capital "  before  the  levying  of  assess 
ments  began.  Practically,  therefore,  and  viewed  as  a 
whole,  the  Comstock  lode  in  twenty-one  years  created 
from  its  yield,  and  at  the  cost  of  only  about  sixty-three 
million  dollars  (adding  the  assessments  as  previously 
noted),  all  the  values  of  towns,  mills,  mines,  machinery, 
and  other  co-ordinate  actualities  too  numerous  to  cata 
logue. 

The  one  distinguishing  feature  of  all  mining  is  the 
fact  that  the  finest  engineering  skill,  the  special  train 
ing  of  geologists  and  mineralogists,  the  hereditary  in 
stincts  of  the  descendants  of  generations  of  miners, 
are,  and  always  will  be,  incapable  of  mapping  out  min 
ing  territory  except  by  tedious  and  expensive  explora 
tions.  There  are  in  all  mines  periods  of  high  produc 
tion  separated  by  periods  of  low  production.  There 
must  be  "  bonanza  "  and  "  borrasca." 

Both  these  words  are  borrowed  from  the  Mexican 
miners.  They  have  musical  and  expressive  phrases 
for  cuts,  adits,  hanging  wall,  foot  wall,  tunnels,  shafts, 
and  every  part  of  a  mine,  as  well  as  for  every  operation 
connected  with  mining.  Two  Mexican  mining  terms 
are  now  generally  known  to  Americans.  When  a  mine 
is  not  in  pay  ore,  or  the  vein  has  "pinched  out"  or 


156  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

disappeared,  it  is  "en  lorra"  or  "  emborrescada"  or 
"  lorrasca."  As  one  hears  it  on  the  Pacific  coast,  it 
implies  ill  luck  or  hard  times,  coupled  with  stern  reso 
lution  to  keep  pegging  away. 

I  once  heard  a  rancher  greet  a  friend  with,  "  How 
are  things  with  you,  Jim?  " 

"  Still  in  borrasca,  but  it  can't  last  forever,"  was  the 
reply. 

"How  did  it  happen,  Jim?" 

"Well,  I  struck  pay  rock  buying  cattle  in  Modoc 
an'  tradin'  that-a-way.  Then  things  sorter  dribbled 
out  till  I  dropped  down  to  sheep  herding  up  on  the 
Chowchilla,  an'  you  know  that's  borrasca." 

"  So  it  is,  sure!  Well,  here's  wishin',  as  the  Greasers 
say,  that  you  may  hev  as  many  days  in  bonanza  as  you 
hed  in  borrasca." 

The  antithesis  is  plain.  Bonanza — a  large  body  of 
pay  ore — has  come  to  mean  especial  prosperity.  The 
allusion  is  to  a  cheerful  proverb  of  the  Mexican  silver 
miners,  which  runs:  "As  many  days  as  you  spend  in 
borrasca  you  will  surely  spend  in  bonanza."  Mexicans 
have  often  been  willing  to  take  leases  of  non-paying 
mines  based  upon  the  condition  that  if  they  find  a 
bonanza  they  shall  be  allowed  to  work  it  for  as  many 
days  as  they  had  laboured  to  find  it.  Such  a  lease  was 
once  given  on  the  Comstock,  and  the  Mexicans  spent 
six  months  tunnelling  through  barren  rock  before  they 
gave  up  in  despair,  much  to  the  joy  of  the  superintend 
ent,  who  had  begun  to  think  they  had  really  found  a 
bonanza  and  were  only  trying  to  lengthen  their  time 
sufficiently  to  be  able  to  "  clean  up  everything  in  sight." 

It  is  one  of  the  striking  features  of  the  story  of  the 
Comstock  that  some  companies  have  usually  been  in 
bonanza  while  others  were  in  borrasca.  Something 
on  the  great  lode  has  been  paying  dividends  even  at 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.        157 

times  of  greatest  depression.  The  working  theory 
of  mines  is  to  be  exploring  for  new  ore  bodies  while 
working  out  the  ore  in  sight,  so  as  to  occupy  both  work 
men  and  mill.  But  in  practice  this  is  often  impossible, 
so  much  "  dead  work  "  has  to  be  done  to  find  and  work 
the  ore  bodies  and  so  much  barren  space  is  passed  over. 
As  long  as  active  exploration  is  being  kept  up  in  a  mine 
there  is  always  a  chance  of  a  strike.  Many  stock  specu 
lators  depend  upon  the  simple  rule  of  buying  whatever 
has  been  a  long  time  out  of  luck.  This  rule  has  made 
and  lost  fortunes  on  the  Comstock. 

There  is  something  sudden,  unexpected,  and  tem 
porary  involved  in  the  term  "  bonanza."  No  one  expects 
or  plans  for  a  bonanza  of  any  sort;  it  means  much  more 
than  merely  pay  rock.  So  it  usually  happens  that  when 
a  company  strikes  a  bonanza  the  stock  has  been  "  kick 
ing  about  the  street,"  to  use  the  broker's  phrase,  which 
means  that  it  was  like  so  much  waste  paper.  The 
chief  owners  of  the  mine  and  their  friends  try  to  gather 
in  all  the  stock  they  can;  pretty  soon  there  is  a  whisper 
of  a  new  bonanza  on  the  Comstock,  and  up  the  prices 
go,  far  above  their  true  value,  then  they  tumble  back 
again.  The  hope  of  a  bonanza,  or  the  rumour  of  its 
actual  presence,  has  been  at  the  bottom  of  every  stock 
excitement.  Safe,  steady  pay  ore  produces  no  such 
flurry  on  the  street. 

What  is  known  on  the  Comstock  as  the  "  old  suc 
cession  of  bonanzas "  began  comparatively  near  the 
surface.  Ophir,  'Mexican,  Savage,  Gould  and  Curry, 
and  Hale  and  Norcross,  all  found  much  ore  along  the 
first  line  of  work.  After  the  vein  was  discovered  to 
dip  toward  the  east  the  second  line  of  shafts  was  con 
structed  with  larger  and  better  works,  and  when  the 
vein  was  again  reached  a  large  number  of  very  rich 
deposits  was  found.  The  gross  yield  of  the  various 


158  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mines  during  this  entire  period  was  as  follows:  Ophir, 
$20,000,000;  Savage,  $16,500,000;  Hale  and  Norcross, 
$11,000,000;  Chollar  and  Potosi,  $16,000,000;  Gould 
and  Curry,  $15,000,000;  Yellow  Jacket,  $16,500,000; 
Crown  Point,  $22,000,000;  Belcher,  $26,000,000;  Over 
man,  $3,250,000;  Imperial,  $2,750,000;  and  Justice, 
Kentucky,  Sierra  Nevada,  and  many  others,  from  a 
hundred  thousand  to  more  than  a  million  dollars.  By 
1865  the  total  bullion  yield  of  Storey  County,  most  of 
it  from  the  Comstock,  was  about  nine  and  a  half  million 
dollars.  During  the  first  twelve  years  after  1859  the 
production  of  all  the  mines  on  the  Comstock  averaged 
a  little  6ver  $12,000,000  annually,  or  a  total  of  $145,- 
000,000.  The  actual  yearly  yield,  however,  fluctuated 
greatly;  it  rose  to  seventeen  or  eighteen  millions  and 
sank  as  low  as  two  millions.  Work  went  on  with  un- 
diminished  zeal  in  every  mine  on  the  lode  during  all 
these  twelve  years,  and  those  mines  that  were  in  bor- 
rasca  kept  going  by  means  of  their  monthly  assess 
ments. 

According  to  modern  methods  of  managing  rich 
mines,  this  enormous  yield  ought  to  have  made  some 
stir  abroad,  but  it  hardly  seemed  to  cause  much  excite 
ment.  Conditions  which  prevailed  on  the  Comstock 
were  such  that  the  larger  part  of  every  bonanza  went 
into  running  and  extraordinary  expenses.  I  have  de 
scribed  a  few  of  the  costly  mechanical  developments 
required,  but  all  along  the  line  magnificent  enterprise 
and  the  most  reckless  waste  went  hand  in  hand,  par 
ticularly  in  the  four  or  five  years  after  1860.  Money 
was  spent  lavishly;  wages  were  very  high,  cost  of  liv 
ing  was  enormous,  and  the  miners  had  the  best  of  every 
thing.  Behind  all  this,  tens  of  millions  of  dollars  went 
for  experiments  with  mills  and  machinery.  As  for 
salaried  officials,  the  number  of  relatives  and  friends 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.        159 

that  the  owners  of  the  famous  mines  managed  to  sup 
port  by  obtaining  them  sinecures  will  never  be  known. 
Clerks  by  the  score  were  paid  with  Comstock  silver 
until,  as  the  writer  of  the  time  casually  remarks,  "  it 
seemed  as  if  half  the  young  men  in  San  Francisco  were 
directly  or  indirectly  supported  by  the  Nevada  mines." 

How  great  was  the  total  of  this  astonishing  waste 
fulness  may  be  gathered  from  a  few  statistics.  The 
grand  old  Ophir,  after  taking  out  $15,000,000,  had 
paid  only  $1,400,000  in  dividends.  Half  a  million, 
to  be  sure,  was  in  the  new  Washoe  Valley  mill,  and  per 
haps  a  million  in  machinery  on  the  mine  itself,  but 
the  rest  went  for  salaries,  labour,  and  "  supplies."  The 
last  elastic  word  had  to  answer  for  many  missing  divi 
dends  in  every  mine  of  the  epoch. 

As  far  as  Virginia  City  was  concerned,  an  assess 
ment  mine  was  often  nearly  as  good  as  a  dividend  mine. 
Every  one  in  its  employ  received  just  as  high  wages, 
paid  with  as  much  promptness,  as  the  wages  at  the 
other  mines.  Lumbermen,  freighters,  merchants,  had 
almost  as  much  support  from  a  mine  that  was  in  bor- 
rasca  as  from  one  in  bonanza,  provided  that  the  bor- 
rasca  did  not  prove  so  continuous  as  to  cause  the  stock 
holders  to  quit  work.  It  was  generally  thought  as 
cheap  to  keep  on  doing  something  as  to  let  the  mine 
go  to  ruin  and  the  machinery  become  worthless. 
"Whether  the  advance  drifts  were  in  barren  feldspar, 
in  pay  ore,  or  in  bonanza,  the  great  mines  went  on  sum 
mer  and  winter  alike. 

I  have  already  illustrated  the  expensive  processes 
by  which  the  rich  ore  of  the  first  line  of  bonanzas  was 
wasted,  in  a  previous  chapter,  by  reference  to  the  use 
less  Gould  and  Curry  mill.  In  those  days  the  stock 
holders  of  the  mines  walked  the  streets  of  Virginia 
City  "  as  if  pacing  the  roof  of  an  unfathomable  treas- 


160  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

lire-house,"  says  Mr.  Eliot  Lord,  "  and  their  heads  were 
continually  in  the  clouds.  They  saw  a  network  of  silver 
beneath  their  feet  and  the  fine  strands  widening  into 
solid  wedges  of  ore/'  No  metaphor  can  exaggerate 
the  prevailing  delirium.  "  Men  were  drunken  with 
the  wine  of  sudden  success,  and  scattered  their  money 
broadcast."  A  superintendent  of  Overman  filled  his 
water  tank  with  champagne  for  his  guests  at  a  wedding. 
Another  Nevada  mining  man  put  door  handles  of  solid 
silver  throughout  his  entire  house.  The  works,  offices, 
residences,  and  stables  of  officials  were  constructed 
on  a  scale  of  expenditure  that  would  have  befitted  an 
Oriental  prince.  Terraces,  fountains,  thoroughbred 
horses,  libraries  in  morocco  "  bought  by  the  foot "  like 
silver  ledges,  the  costliest  of  whatever  can  be  worn, 
drank,  or  eaten — these  were  counted  among  the  neces 
saries  of  existence. 

When  the  free-handed  Californians  led  in  such 
lavishness,  the  few  old-timers  who  were  left  soon  caught 
the  pace.  One  of  these  was  Sandy  Bowers,  once  a 
Gold  Hill  placer  miner,  whose  claim  was  ten  feet  on 
the  Comstock.  A  washerwoman  who  was  in  the  camp 
owned  ten  feet  adjoining.  Bowers  married  her,  and  in 
a  year  or  two,  their  ground  proving  to  be  in  the  heart 
of  the  surface  bonanzas,  they  became  extremely  rich. 
Bowers  began  in  1861  a  stone  mansion  which  finally 
cost  him  $407,000.  While  the  contractors  were  at 
work  upon  the  house  the  wedded  pair  went  to  Europe, 
spending  three  years  there  with  great  comfort  to  them 
selves.  Before  they  left,  Bowers  hired  the  International 
Hotel  and  gave  a  banquet  to  nearly  the  whole  of  Vir 
ginia  City.  Every  luxury  that  San  Francisco  could 
furnish  was  ordered  for  the  occasion.  Bowers' s  speech 
was  long  quoted  on  the  Comstock:  "  I've  had  powerful 
good  luck  in  this  country,  an'  now  I've  got  money 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA. 

to  throw  at  the  birds.  Ther  arn't  no  chance  for  a  gen 
tleman  to  spend  his  coin  in  this  country,  an5  so  me  an' 
Mrs.  Bowers  is  goin'  ter  Yoorup  to  take  in  the  sights." 
He  proceeded  to  explain  that  there  were  few  or  no  people 
worth  seeing  in  America.  He  considered  Horace 
Greeley  worth  looking  at,  "  likewise  Governor  Nye  and 
old  Winnemucca."  But  what  he  had  really  set  his  heart 
upon  was  to  see  "the  Queen  of  England  and  all  the 
other  great  folks  of  them  countries."  Sandy  Bowers 
continued  to  throw  his  money  at  the  birds — chiefly 
birds  of  prey,  as  may  easily  be  conjectured.  He  died 
in  1868,  the  mine  ceased  to  pay,  and  Mrs.  Bowers,  re 
duced  to  poverty,  became  widely  known  as  the  "  Seeress 
of  Washoe,"  the  most  popular  fortune-teller  on  the 
Comstock. 

During  the  first  few  years  of  the  Comstock  the  domi 
nating  individual  was  undoubtedly  the  well-known 
William  A.  Stewart,  afterward  United  States  Senator. 
He  was  a  man  of  large  plans,  immense  fertility  of  re 
source,  and  unblenching  courage.  Burly,  frank- 
spoken,  powerful  mentally  and  physically,  he  was  said 
by  the  Gold  Hill  News  to  "  tower  above  his  fellow-citi 
zens  like  the  Colossus  of  Ehodes  "  and  to  "  contain  as 
much  brass  in  his  composition  as  that  famous  statue 
ever  had."  If  the  flush  times  had  continued,  one  can 
hardly  see  how  the  authority  of  "  Bill  Stewart  of  Ne 
vada  "  could  have  been  shaken.  But  the  times  when  the 
control  of  a  great  mining  district  passes  from  one  man 
or  set  of  men  to  others  are  undoubtedly  the  times  when 
bonanzas  fail  and  stockholders  begin  to  despair.  Then 
occurs  a  general  readjustment,  and  new  men  force 
themselves  to  the  front  as  captains  of  industry. 

Ophir,  which  had  spent  a  million  dollars  or  more 
in  litigation  over  a  piece  of  mining  ground  that  it  after 
ward  bought  for  seventy  thousand  dollars;  Gould  and 


162  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Curry,  whose  bonanza  was  plainly  at  an  end  by  1864; 
Savage,  and  others  of  less  importance — these  began  to 
retrench  in  every  possible  way.  The  trained  business 
man  began  to  be  in  demand;  the  virtues  of  adversity 
began  to  be  developed.  The  wild  and  passionate  min 
ing-camp  leaders,,  whose  impulses  were  as  strong  and 
fierce  as  the  waves  of  the  ocean,  were  slowly  giving 
way  before  a  new  epoch — that  of  the  close  organiza 
tion  of  capitalists  for  motives  of  self-interest.  Gone 
were  the  Comstocks  and  O'Kileys,  gone  was  old  Finney, 
the  Rip  Van  Winkle  of  Washoe.  Going,  too,  were 
the  early  Californians,  the  supplanters  of  the  first  Com- 
stockers,  the  early  mill-builders,  the  first  lumberers 
in  the  Washoe  foothills,  the  men  of  the  first  line  of 
bonanzas.  They  had  spent  too  royally;  the  mines  were 
in  borrasca,  money  was  scarce,  and  every  one  was  in 
debt. 

A  small,  quiet,  reserved  man,  a  born  financier — 
William  Sharon — became  in  the  spring  of  1864  the 
manager  of  the  branch  of  the  Bank  of  California  at  Vir 
ginia  City.  It  is  said  that  he  had  devoted  much  of  the 
preceding  year  to  study  of  the  Comstock;  he  had  lost 
a  moderate  fortune  in  stocks,  and  was  anxious  to  re 
cover  himself.  For  several  months  before  his  appoint 
ment  he  had  been  a  private  financial  agent  of  Ealston's, 
and  had  saved  large  sums  to  the  bank.  Though  almost 
unknown,  a  few  men  saw  in  him  the  coming  master 
of  Nevada. 

Local  banking  houses  were  lending  money  to  busi 
ness  men  and  mill  owners  for  from  three  to  five  per 
cent  a  month;  Sharon  offered  loans  on  the  same  se 
curity  at  two  per  cent,  and  made  large  advances  on 
these  terms.  While  the  mines  were  turning  out  ore 
the  mills  could  easily  pay  such  interest  and  make 
money,  but  as  soon  as  the  ore  product  was  checked  and 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.       163 

the  music  of  the  stamps  ceased,  the  mill  owners  were 
in  trouble.  A  mill  in  White  Pine  district  that  had 
cost  $200,000  was  once  vainly  offered,  when  in  per 
fect  condition,  for  $5,000.  Sharon  himself  once  sold 
a  mill  for  $3,000  that  had  cost  him  $60,000,  the  original 
loan,  and  interest.  Here  in  the  shadow  of  dull  times 
along  the  lode  were  the  beginnings  of  what  the  public 
soon  called  "  an  infamous,  fortified  monopoly  system." 
The  bankers  became  the  mill  owners,  and  ultimately 
managed  to  control  the  mines  also.  Sharon's  oppor 
tunity  came  through  the  few  years  of  leanness  in  the 
producing  mines. 

Mill  after  mill  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Bank  of 
California  until  seven  large  and  well-equipped  quartz 
mills  with  all  their  water  rights,  contracts,  and  privi 
leges  belonged  to  that  institution.  Sharon  had  investi 
gated  every  mine  on  the  lode,  and  believed  that  there 
was  a  future  for  the  Comstock  far  brighter  than  the 
past.  Ralston,  though  always  a  daring  operator  rather 
than  a  banker,  felt  doubtful  of  the  future  of  the  mines. 
If  they  should  fail,  the  abandonment  of  the  district  was 
sure  to  follow,  and  not  only  the  large  sums  he  had  ad 
vanced  upon  milling  property,  but  the  equally  large 
amounts  loaned  to  mining  companies  (not  to  individ 
uals)  would  be  entirely  lost.  The  security  was  practi 
cally  ore  (as  yet  undiscovered) ;  none  of  the  mine  owners 
were  personally  responsible  under  the  laws  of  that 
period  for  company  debts.  Mills,  machinery,  all  the 
towns  of  Nevada  even,  were  not  worth  tuppence  if  the 
fissure,  so  barren  at  the  levels  being  worked  in  1865, 
continued  barren  much  below  that  depth.  An  absolute 
collapse  of  the  mines  and  all  interests  dependent  upon 
them  was  looked  upon  as  a  not  unlikely  event.  Large 
owners  began  to  try  to  sell,  with  the  usual  result  of 
breaking  the  stock  market  completely. 
12 


164  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

At  this  time  Ralston  visited  the  Comstock.  It  pre 
sented  a  melancholy  picture  of  a  mining  camp  in  eclipse, 
and  he  became  very  uneasy  at  the  situation.  How  much 
the  Bank  of  California  then  had  invested  is  not  known, 
but  it  was  said  by  Mr.  Sharon,  years  later,  that  at  one 
time  before  1870  three  million  dollars  of  the  five  million 
dollars  capital  of  the  bank  was  loaned  on  the  Comstock. 
The  leading  bank  of  the  Pacific  coast  had  virtually 
become  a  mine-supply  company  for  a  group  of  silver 
mines  in  Washoe!  It  already  controlled  some  of  the 
mines  at  the  time  the  mills  began  to  fall  into  its  pos 
session,  and,  upon  Sharon's  advice,  the  policy  of  con 
quest  was  pursued  with  redoubled  energy.  The  bank 
in  the  hands  of  Ealston  and  his  friends  was  liberal, 
enterprising,  speculative,  and  at  times  enormously 
profitable,  but  it  was  managed  in  a  spirit  that  was  far 
removed  from  safe  commercial  methods.  One  may 
even  say  that  the  whole  reckless  audacity  of  the  mining 
era  of  the  Pacific  coast  found  its  apotheosis  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  Bank  of  California,  and  its  typical  men  in 
Ralston  and  his  group. 

Sharon  advised  that  a  corporation  should  be  organ 
ized  by  some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  Bank  of  Cali 
fornia  to  buy  and  manage  the  mills  which  had  come 
into  its  possession,  and  that  these  men  (who  were  al 
ready  holders  of  much  mining  stock)  should  concen 
trate  their  energies  upon  such  mines  as  were  producing 
or  likely  to  produce  ore  for  milling.  The  possibilities 
of  profit  to  this  company  in  case  of  new  ore  bodies  being 
found  were  very  great,  for  they  would  be  making  con 
tracts  with  themselves  whenever  they  sent  the  ore  to 
a  custom  mill.  In  June,  1867,  therefore,  the  famous 
Mill  and  Mining  Company  was  formed  by  W.  C.  Ral 
ston,  William  Sharon,  Alvinza  Hay  ward,  D.  0.  Mills, 
and  others.  They  were  soon  called  the  "  fortified  mo- 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.       165 

nopolists,"  and  nearly  all  the  vested  interests  of  the 
State  of  Nevada  other  than  their  own  were  soon  arrayed 
against  them. 

There  are  but  two  systems  of  handling  ores:  each 
mine  can  own  its  own  mill,  or  it  can  send  its  ores  to 
a  custom  mill.  In  the  one  case  the  mine  owners  build 
and  carry  on  the  mills,  managing  them  through  salaried 
employees;  in  the  other  they  contract  with  the  lowest 
bidders  who  can  and  will  guarantee  fair  returns.  Both 
systems  have  drawbacks.  On  the  Comstock  the  experi 
ment  made  by  some  mines  of  building  their  own  mills 
had  been  a  sad  one;  the  free,  energetic  mill  owner 
became  a  more  efficient  ore-worker  than  the  hired  mill 
superintendent.  But  the  Comstockers  did  not  protect 
the  permanent  interests  of  the  mill  men  to  whom  they 
owed  so  much.  What  Prof.  Raymond  has  called  the 
piratical  policy  of  gutting  the  mines  was  carried  on  at 
such  a  shocking  rate  of  speed  that  it  first  unduly  stimu 
lated  the  building  of  mills  and  afterward  left  the  mines 
totally  unable  to  sustain  any  of  them. 

Ralston's  Mill  and  Mining  Company  in  two  years 
was  the  owner  of  seventeen  mills,  some  obtained  by 
foreclosure  of  mortgages,  others  by  purchase.  While 
outside  mills  could  not  make  a  living,  those  of  the 
syndicate  were  kept  running  night  and  day,  crushing 
nearly  all  the  ore  of  the  region.  Naturally,  the  syn 
dicate  fought  everything  that  threatened  to  reduce  its 
profits  or  check  the  progress  of  its  plans  to  become 
absolute  master  of  the  Comstock  and  its  allied  interests. 
It  fought  Sutro,  because  his  tunnel  might  permit  out 
side  mills  on  the  Carson  Eiver  to  work  ore  even 
cheaper;  it  fought  the  independent  mines  and  mills; 
it  entered  politics  and  fought  against  certain  laws  and 
for  other  laws  after  the  manner  of  similar  syndicates 
the  world  over.  It  began  to  hedge  about  the  free  Com- 


166  THE  STO&Y  OP  THE  MINE. 

stock  miner,  and  slowly  but  surely  all  men  became  aware 
that  the  substitution  of  the  Sharon  group  for  the  Stew 
art  group  as  the  leading  personal  influence  in  Nevada 
was  a  complete  revolution — the  greatest  that  the  sage 
brush  land  had  yet  seen. 

During  this  period  of  depression,  when  the  Corn- 
stock  lode  fell  measurably  into  the  hands  of  this  small 
group  of  Bank  of  California  men,  almost  the  first 
scheme  of  Sharon  and  his  associates  was  the  building 
of  a  railroad  to  connect  the  mines  with  more  distant 
mills  owned  by  the  syndicate,  and  both  with  the  main 
Central  Pacific  line.  It  was  an  old  idea,  like  every 
thing  else,  long  rolling  about — a  mere  tumble-weed 
of  the  desert.  Legislatures,  both  Territorial  and  State, 
had  granted  charter  after  charter  to  different  parties 
who  agreed  to  build  railroads  after  a  manner  which 
looked  excellently  well  on  paper.  But  these  premature 
and  miscellaneous  projects  of  universal  railroad  build 
ing  in  that  wild  mountain  land  were  without  definite 
purpose,  and  soon  sank  into  a  state  of  innocuous  desue 
tude. 

Then  Sharon,  the  man  of  affairs,  sent  for  the  best 
mining  surveyor  on  the  Comstock.  This  was  Superin 
tendent  James,  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  Company.  The 
conversation  that  follows  is  from  his  own  statement. 
Sharply,  and  without  a  word  of  explanation,  Sharon 
said: 

"  James,  can  you  run  a  railroad  from  Virginia  City 
to  the  Carson  Eiver?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Do  it  at  once." 

The  next  day  a  party  of  surveyors  were  in  the  field 
along  the  mountain  trails  and  highways.  In  a  month 
the  twenty-one  miles  of  the  route  were  mapped  out, 
grading  had  been  already  commenced,  and  the  rails 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.  167 

had  been  ordered  in  England.  Sharon  himself  had  not 
been  idle.  He  had  formed  his  company,  had  bought 
out  the  necessary  rights  of  those  who  had  several  mori 
bund  charters,  and  had  obtained  from  the  Legislature 
a  new  charter.  More  than  this,  he  had  secured  legis 
lative  authority  for  the  issuance  of  $500,000  in  bonda 
by  the  counties  of  Storey  and  Ormsby  as  a  free  gift 
to  the  railroad.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  counties 
duly  issued  the  bonds,  and  without  making  any  condi 
tions  whatever.  The  mining  companies  on  the  lode 
subscribed  $700,000.  Eather  a  busy  thirty  days  this, 
and  well  worth  noting  as  an  instance  of  Comstock 
energy. 

Before  April  750  men  were  at  work,  and  by  May 
1,200,  distributed  in  thirty-eight  camps,  strung  along 
the  line  from  Carson  to  Virginia  City.  Other  gangs 
were  hewing  ties  in  the  Sierras.  On  September  28th, 
the  English  rails  having  arrived,  the  first  one  was  laid, 
and  on  November  12th  the  first  engine  reached  Gold 
Hill.  The  road  cost  $1,750,000,  and  as  much  more 
was  spent  the  next  year  in  extending  it  to  a  junction 
with  the  Central  Pacific  at  Reno. 

What  the  engineers  had  done  in  the  construction 
of  this  little  railroad  was  to  lay  out  a  line  with  a  grade 
of  about  1,600  feet  in  thirteen  and  a  half  miles.  The 
maximum  grade  is  11.6  feet  to  the  mile,  and  the  curves 
of  the  road  in  thirteen  and  a  half  miles  of  mountain 
distance  make  seventeen  full  circles  of  the  track.  It 
justly  ranks  as  one  of  the  noteworthy  achievements 
of  American  mining  camps. 

Trouble  followed  fast  enough:  the  fine  old  silver 
freighter,  in  Nevada  slang  the  mule-skinner,  the  bull- 
puncher,  swinging-  his  oxen  around  the  logging  camps 
west  of  Washoe  Valley,  even  that  aristocrat  of  the 
fraternity,  the  lordly  "  silk-popper,"  flicking  his  play* 


168  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

f ul  whip  at  the  leaders  as  he  skilfully  steered  his  loaded 
stages  along  the  precipices  down  Gold  Canon  to  Silver 
City  and  Dayton — these,  all  these,  after  loud  complaint 
and  unavailing  struggles,  went  their  ways  into  the  un- 
railroaded  distance  in  search  of  new  camps.  "  Sharon's 
iron  mules/7  as  they  said,  were  too  much  for  them. 
Some  teamsters  redoubled  their  efforts,  determined  to 
"  beat  Sharon  or  bust."  One  "  train  "  hauled  to  John- 
town  in  1870  weighed,  according  to  the  Gold  Hill  News, 
90,690  pounds,  including  the  wagons;  the  ore  alone 
weighed  over  thirty-six  tons.  But  the  locomotive  beat 
them,  for  the  engineers  sought  to  surpass  each  other 
and  made  some  astonishing  records  for  the  freight  en 
gines  then  in  use.  Finally  a  fourteen-horse  team  fell 
over  the  grade,  breaking  up  the  wagons  and  disabling 
the  horses,  and  the  freighters  reluctantly  retired  from 
the  unequal  contest. 

Cost  of  transportation  was  decidedly  reduced  by  the 
railroad.  Ore  went  to  Carson  for  two  dollars  a  ton 
where  before  it  had  cost  three  dollars  and  a  half,  and 
this  made  it  possible  for  the  mines  to  work  lower  grades 
of  ore,  long  thought  too  poor  to  pay  expenses.  Cord 
wood  fell  from  fifteen  dollars  a  cord  to  eleven  dollars 
and  a  half.  As  many  as  forty-five  freight  trains  went 
daily  over  the  road.  The  mines,  the  mills,  the  freight 
age,  were  now  in  the  hands  of  the  syndicate,  and  it  began 
to  reach  out  to  control  both  the  timber  supply  and  the 
water  supply  of  the  Comstock. 

Meanwhile  the  real  condition  of  the  mines  had  been 
a  constant  source  of  profound  anxiety  to  Sharon  and  his 
associates.  None  knew  better  than  they  did  that  al 
though  borrasca  had  put  them  into  possession,  a  few 
more  years  of  borrasca  would  utterly  smash  their  for 
tunes.  They  had  acted  with  singular  discretion  and 
energy,  had  originated  and  carried  out  great  concep- 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.  169 

tions,  Jiad  dared  to  build  their  railroad  in  the  darkest 
hour  of  their  enterprise.  What  next?  They  held  many 
an  anxious  consultation  about  the  mines.  The  bullion 
product  of  the  lode  which  had  been  $16,000,000  in 
1865  fell  to  $11,739,100  in  1866,  rose  somewhat  the 
next  year,  fell  heavily  to  $8,499,769  in  1868,  and  still 
further  to  $7,528,607  in  1869.  Fewer  tons  of  ore  were 
being  raised,  and  the  ore  was  of  lower  value.  The 
"  bonanza  raisins  "  in  the  great  Comstock  plum  pud 
ding,  to  use  a  comparison  once  made  by  John  W. 
Mackay,  were  taken  out,  and,  so  far  as  any  one  knew, 
there  might  be  no  more.  In  fact,  the  most  experienced 
miners  now  held  that  any  future  deposits  of  ore  would 
be  smaller  and  leaner  than  before.  Mining  observa 
tions  elsewhere  had  seemed  to  show  that  there  was  a 
line  a  few  hundred  feet  down  that  marked  the  limit 
of  pay  ore.  Besides,  the  Comstock  lode  was  different 
from  any  other  in  the  impossibility  of  tracing  much 
if  any  connection  between  one  ore  body  and  another. 
The  ores  as  the  mines  descended  were  not  only  poorer 
but  more  refractory,  and  the  quartz  "  gangue,"  or  vein 
matter,  was  changing  to  carbonate  and  sulphate  of  lime, 
which  seldom  contained  ore. 

There  had  been  eleven  bonanzas  up  to  1869,  and  all 
of  these  were  now  nearly  exhausted.  Ophir  was  with 
out  pay  ore;  Gould  and  Curry  and  Yellow  Jacket  were 
yielding  less  than  one  fourth  their  usual  product;  at 
the  south  end  even  the  richest  of  the  Gold  Hill  mines 
were  in  a  bad  way.  The  solitary  cause  for  hopefulness 
was  the  fact  that  a  very  narrow  vein  of  promising  ore, 
a  mere  stringer  that  might  develop  into  something 
better,  had  been  found  in  Yellow  Jacket  in  November, 
1868.  It  was  on  the  900-foot  level,  and  had  been  care 
fully  studied  by  all  the  members  of  the  syndicate,  but 
for  some  time  it  led  to  nothing.  A  struggle  with  the 


170  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Miners'  Union  and  a  disastrous  fire  in  the  mines  added 
still  greater  intensity  to  the  situation.  Some  of  the 
members  of  the  syndicate  began  to  weaken  toward  the 
end  of  1870;  it  was  whispered  everywhere  that  the 
Comstock  had  paid  its  last  dividend;  the  cities  on  the 
lode  were  already  trembling  upon  the  verge  of  panic- 
when  an  apparently  barren  portion  of  the  Comstock 
became  of  the  first  importance. 

Crown  Point  mine,  540  feet  on  the  lode,  had  paid 
no  dividends  for  some  time;  had  in  fact  levied  $240,- 
000  assessments.  The  superintendent  was  the  noted 
John  P.  Jones,  since  United  States  Senator,  an  old 
Californian  who  had  been  in  Nevada  only  a  short  time. 
From  the  spring  of  1868  till  November,  1870,  he  had 
hunted  in  vain  for  ore  by  drifts  on  the  9 00-,  the  1,000-, 
and  the  1,100-foot  levels.  Everywhere  were  barren 
quartz  and  porphyry.  The  stock  fell  to  a  price  which 
rated  the  total  value  of  the  mine  with  its  $140,000  in 
vested  in  machinery  alone  at  only  $24,000;  the  owners 
would  not  pay  another  assessment.  But  late  in  1870 
the  character  of  the  rock  in  a  new  drift  that  Super 
intendent  Jones  was  running  showed  slight  changes. 
The  hard,  gray  porphyry  that  the  miners  had  been 
cutting  through  in  every  direction  for  years  began  to 
grow  softer,  with  streaks  of  quartz  and  red,  rusty  lines. 
Some  two  hundred  and  forty  feet  from  the  beginning 
of  the  drift  a  seam  of  clay  was  found.  They  cut  this, 
and  soft  white  quartz  was  entered  which  proved  to  con 
tain  small  knobs  of  ore.  The  value  of  the  stock  rose  to 
ninety  dollars  on  the  strength  of  this  promise.  By 
May  a  cross-cut  from  the  1,200-foot  level  entered  the 
same  formation,  and  the  price  of  shares  went  to  one 
hundred  and  eighty  dollars. 

Alvinza  Hayward,  receiving  private  information, 
began  to  purchase  at  two  dollars  a  share,  and  finally  ob- 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.       171 

tained  control  of  the  mine,  but  he  did  this  as  an  individ 
ual,  not  as  a  member  of  the  famous  Bank  of  California 
syndicate.  This  was  Sharon's  first  and  almost  only  de 
feat  during  his  career  on  the  Comstock.  The  Union 
Mill  and  Mining  Company  lost  because  Crown  Point 
made  contracts  elsewhere,  and  its  new  owners  organized 
the  Nevada  Mill  and  Mining  Company  as  a  rival  to  the 
Bank  of  California. 

But  the  lesser  defeat  was  merely  an  incident  of  the 
larger  success  of  Sharon  and  his  group.  Every  other 
mine  on  the  lode  became  much  more  valuable.  Money 
poured  into  the  emptied  treasuries  of  the  mining  com 
panies  still  in  borrasca,  and  the  Bank  of  California 
was  placed  out  of  danger  for  the  first  time  in  several 
years. 

Crown  Point  was  one  of  the  Gold  Hill  group.  Its 
bonanza  increased  the  total  yield  of  the  district  from 
upward  of  eight  millions  in  1870  to  upward  of  eleven 
millions  in  1871,  and  this  total,  swelled  by  contribu 
tions  from  other  mines  that  had  begun  to  get  into  the 
line  of  deep  bonanzas,  was  $13,569.000  in  1872.  The 
total  yield  of  Crown  Point  between  May,  1864,  and  May, 
1877,  is  estimated  as  close  upon  twenty-five  million  dol 
lars.  Crown  Point  stock  reached  its  highest  point  in 
1872,  when  it  sold  for  $1,825  a  share — a  valuation  of 
about  twenty-two  millions  for  a  property  that  only 
eighteen  months  earlier  had  been  rated  at  $24,000. 
This  shows  the  popular  estimate  of  the  new  bonanza. 

Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  the  period  of  litigation  over 
the  surface  bonanzas  was  followed  by  a  long  and  almost 
universal  depression  in  the  values  of  the  various  mines, 
which  was  suddenly  ended  by  discoveries  made  in  a 
hitherto  barren  mass  of  porphyry.  The  uses  and  op 
portunities  of  mining  adversity  were  never  more  evi 
dent,  for  the  period  of  borrasca  enabled  the  Bank  of 


172  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

California  syndicate  to  accomplish  what  would  have 
been  impossible  a  few  years  earlier  or  a  few  years  later. 
A  new  group  of  men  had  found  their  longed-for  oppor 
tunity  and  had  many  times  multiplied  their  fortunes 
by  the  dangerous  venture.  Even  Sharon  in  the  ful 
ness  of  his  power  could  not  prevent  others  from  sharing 
in  the  results  of  his  organizing  abilities;  and  although 
he  had  long  planned  to  be  master  of  every  bonanza  on 
the  lode,  through  prior  information  and  larger  capital 
than  his  associates,  he  was  finally  conquered  by  Jones 
and  Hayward  in  the  struggle  for  Crown  Point. 


CHAPTEE  XVI. 

DAYS  OF  THE   GEEAT  BONANZA. 

THE  discovery  of  Crown  Point's  bonanza  in  1870 
had  increased  the  value  of  all  the  mines  on  the  Corn- 
stock  by  about  $45,000,000.  A  still  greater  bonanza 
— the  one  by  which  the  fame  of  Nevada  was  spread 
abroad  in  every  land  and  every  tongue — was  near  dis 
covery,  even  while  Senator  Jones  was  running  the  fate 
ful  drift  that  raised  Crown  Point  stock  within  a  year 
from  $2  a  share  to  $1,825  and  lifted  stock  of  Belcher, 
the  adjoining  mine,  from  $1.50  a  share  to  $1,525. 

Even  while  Hayward  and  Jones  were  dividing  con 
trol  of  the  productive  mines  of  the  lode  with  Sharon 
and  other  members  of  the  Bank  of  California  syndicate, 
two  Irishmen,  John  W.  Mackay  and  James  G-.  Fair, 
were  obtaining  the  fulcrum  upon  which  to  poise  and 
turn  to  their  own  purposes  the  most  valuable  portions 
of  the  whole  Comstock  lode.  Three  San  Francisco 
men — James  C.  Flood,  William  S.  O'Brien,  and  J.  M. 
Walker — were  soon  joined  with  them  in  mining  enter 
prises.  Flood  and  O'Brien  had  been  retailing  liquors 
in  a  large  San  Francisco  saloon.  Walker  soon  sold  out 
his  interest  to  Mackay  for  $3,000,000,  lost  it  in  bad  in 
vestments,  and  died  in  poverty.  The  others  became 
the  four  "bonanza  kings"  of  the  period,  and  their 
rise  forms  one  of  the  most  romantic  chapters  of  mining 
life  in  America.  It  seems  to  represent  in  a  typical  way 
the  splendid  and  fortunate  element  that  one  likes  to 

173 


174:  THE  STOHY  OF  THE  MINE. 

think  of  as  belonging  to  every  mining  district.  It  better 
explains  the  fascination  that  abides  in  the  very  name 
"  Comstock  "  than  all  the  strange  and  interesting  de 
tails  about  the  mines  themselves. 

There  was  a  Dublin-born  youth  of  eighteen  named 
Mackay,  a  shipbuilder's  clerk  in  New  York,  who  was 
placer  mining  in  California  in  1852.  He  saved  a  little 
money  and  lost  it,  saved  a  little  more,  and  moved  to 
Virginia  City  in  1860.  Here  he  began  to  run  a  tunnel 
on  a  claim,  used  up  his  available  funds,  and  went  to  work 
in  the  Mexican  mine  as  a  timberman  underground  at 
four  dollars  a  day.  That  job  finished,  he  swung  a  shovel 
and  pick  for  the  same  wages. 

James  G.  Fair  was  a  Tyrone  lad  of  eighteen  when 
he  took  the  California  gold  fever.  He  mined  on  the 
Feather  Kiver  bars  for  several  years,  with  little  success. 
Then  he  tried  quartz,  and  became  superintendent  of 
a  Calaveras  mine.  In  1860,  like  Mackay,  he  went  to 
the  Comstock,  and  was  made  superintendent  of  the 
Ophir,  on  a  good  salary,  of  course,  but  otherwise,  seem 
ingly,  as  far  from  the  ultimate  ownership  of  any  mine 
on  the  lode  as  the  most  ordinary  miner  under  his  super 
vision. 

In  1860  both  Fair  and  Mackay  (like  John  P.  Jones, 
the  discoverer  of  Crown  Point  bonanza)  were  poor  and 
obscure  men.  Finney,  Comstock,  O'Biley,  McLaughlin, 
and  the  rest  of  the  first  owners  of  the  lode  had  much 
more  money  and  far  better  opportunities  than  Mackay, 
Fair,  or  Jones,  who  became  the  three  most  famous 
miners  of  the  district,  and,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  add, 
the  three  leading  silver  miners  of  America.  Flood  and 
O'Brien  were  mere  speculators,  not  miners.  They 
paid  assessments,  but  did  nothing  else  to  find  and  gather 
the  golden  harvest.  Flood  developed  great  financial 
ability,  but  O'Brien  was,  and  remained  till  the  day  of 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     175 

his  death,  a  very  commonplace  individual  of  mediocre 
talents. 

Sharon  had  come  to  the  Comstock  with  capital  in 
his  control,,  so  that  at  one  time  it  was  said  he  directed 
the  management  of  every  productive  mine  and  every 
operating  mill,  besides  the  waterworks,  the  lumber  sup 
ply,  and  the  railroad — altogether  some  twenty-five  mil 
lion  dollars  of  real  property  aside  from  stock  values. 
The  new  bonanza  monarchs,  Fair  and  Mackay,  were 
about  to  raise  a  piece  of  seemingly  barren  territory, 
neglected  and  despised  by  Sharon,  to  the  rank  of  an  in 
dependent  and  more  powerful  kingdom,  so  that  the 
Bank  of  California  syndicate,  rapidly  recovering  from 
the  blow  dealt  it  by  the  defection  of  Jones  and  Hay- 
ward,  was  to  be  permanently  made  a  "  second-rate 
power  "  on  the  Comstock. 

Mackay  and  Fair,  even  as  young  men,  deserved 
large  success  as  far  as  constant  labour  and  study  and 
steady  habits  may  be  said  to  deserve  it.  One  easily  sees 
that  both  were  strongly  imbued  with  the  narrow  but 
powerful  ambition  to  become  extremely  wealthy;  that 
each  in  his  especial  line  of  work — Mackay  as  a  miner, 
Fair  as  a  mining  superintendent — saved  all  he  could 
and  speculated  with  it  for  the  sole  purpose  of  becom 
ing  a  mine  owner;  and,  finally,  that  both  were  very 
hard  students  of  mines  and  of  everything  connected 
with  mines.  When  they  met,  each  recognised  in  the 
other  a  kindred  spirit,  and  they  immediately  joined 
forces. 

But  Mackay  outranks  the  rest  of  the  Comstock 
leaders,  because  his  rise  was  more  remarkable  and  his 
grasp  of  circumstances  more  firm.  From  a  day  labourer 
toiling  in  the  lower  levels  he  became  superintendent 
of  the  Caledonia  Tunnel  and  Mining  Company.  This 
was  at  Gold  Hill.  It  had  a  hundred  thousand  shares, 


176  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

had  yielded  by  1878  $345,000,  and  had  assessed  its 
stockholders  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  dollars.  A 
few  years  later  he  became  one  of  the  principal  owners 
of  Kentuck,  a  very  rich  mine  ninety-four  feet  on  the 
lode,  which  up  to  1880  had  paid  $952,000  in  excess 
of  dividends  over  assessments.  Beyond  a  doubt,  this 
purchase  was  made  because  of  Mackay's  rare  and  valu 
able  faculty  of  discerning  the  best  time  to  buy  or  to 
sell  mining  stocks.  His  cool  brain,  long  weighing  the 
chances  of  every  inch  of  explorations  in  any  mine  he 
thought  of  speculating  in,  was  steady  in  the  midst  of 
wildest  excitement.  His  own  statement  is  that  he 
sought  with  all  the  powers  of  his  mind  and  body  to  be 
come  "master  and  manager  of  the  greatest  mines  in 
the  world."  Mackay's  swift  imagination  and  sanguine 
temperament,  controlled  by  his  ambitions,  were  secret 
ly  on  fire  with  the  possibilities  he  saw  in  the  great  lode. 
He  dreamed  and  toiled,  hoping  to  win  in  some  way 
such  power  as  Sharon  had.  Somewhere  in  that  moun 
tain  mass,  pierced  a  little  way  here  and  there  by  pin- 
holes  of  drifts,  there  doubtless  lay  another  bonanza. 
But  in  which  mine? 

After  Mackay  became  part  owner  of  Kentuck  he 
received  large  dividends  and  was  able  to  make  another 
move.  Hale  and  Norcross  has  been  mentioned  frequent 
ly  in  these  pages.  It  was  a  mine  from  which  much  was 
hoped  by  the  most  competent  authorities.  It  had  im 
mense  unexplored  territory  and  its  equipment  was  un 
surpassed.  Mackay  and  Fair  studied  this  mine; 
watched  its  shares  rise  early  in  1868  from  $1,260  to 
$2,100;  saw  also  a  complete  collapse,  until  by  Sep 
tember  the  price  was  less  than  forty-two  dollars  a 
share.  This  gave  them  a  chance,  and  they  controlled 
the  mine  at  the  annual  election  in  March,  1879. 
Fair,  leaving  the  Ophir,  went  in  as  superintendent, 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     177 

and  in  a  few  months  it  was  again  on  the  dividend 
list. 

Old  Comstock  miners  still  speak  with  admiration 
of  the  "  fine  nose  for  ore  "  that  Fair  displayed  as  super 
intendent.  His  watchfulness,  energy,  and  strictness  of 
discipline  were  never  surpassed  in  the  mines  of  the 
period.  He  knew  every  inch  of  the  miles  of  under 
ground  workings  as  well  as  the  rooms  of  his  own  house, 
and  far  better  than  the  miners  themselves,  each  of  whom 
stays  on  the  level  to  which  he  is  assigned.  The  new 
Hale  and  Norcross  bonanza  which  he  discovered  and 
worked  out  at  this  period  paid  $728,000  in  dividends 
in  1869  and  1870,  more  than  half  of  which,  of  course, 
went  into  the  pockets  of  himself  and  his  partners. 

One  barren  section  of  the  lode  is  between  the  Gold 
Hill  group  and  the  Virginia  City  group  of  mines.  On 
about  twenty-five  hundred  feet  here  mere  assessment 
work  had  sunk  several  million  dollars;  the  stock  was 
consequently  at  a  very  low  figure.  Mackay  had  always 
wished  to  conduct  a  thorough  exploration  of  one  of 
these  barren  mines.  In  1869  he  put  money  into  Bullion 
and  became  its  superintendent.  Fair,  a  year  later, 
was  elected  superintendent  of  Savage,  still  retaining 
his  interest  in  Hale  and  Norcross.  Four  mines  of  note 
were  now  controlled  by  Mackay,  Fair,  and  their  allies; 
and  they  were  too  shrewd  men  not  to  get  back  all  their 
investments  as  long  as  there  was  a  stock  market. 
Bullion,  however,  was  always  a  badly  named  mine; 
no  bonanza  was  ever  found  there,  nor  in  Savage.  The 
Bank  of  California  group  of  operators  began  to  feel 
better;  it  had  not  been  much  of  a  storm  anyhow.  In 
a  few  years  more  the  million  or  so  that  Mackay,  Fair, 
and  the  others  had  made  by  accident  or  by  speculation 
would  be  sunk  in  unproductive  mines.  Mackay  would 
be  back  in  the  face  of  a  drift  at  four  dollars  a  day;  Fair, 


178  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

who  was  somewhat  of  a  superintendent,  could  be  made 
very  useful  if  he  would  only  give  up  his  notions  of  being 
an  independent  owner.  Meanwhile  the  Mackay  firm, 
weakened  financially  but  still  undismayed,  were  de 
termined  to  thoroughly  explore  another  portion  of  the 
Comstock. 

At  the  North  End,  between  Ophir  and  Best  and 
Belcher,  there  was  a  long-neglected  chain  of  small  loca 
tions  occupying  in  the  aggregate  1,310  feet.  Only  very 
small  deposits  of  pay  ore  had  been  found  in  this  group, 
near  the  surface,  and  the  owners  had  lacked  capital 
for  extensive  explorations.  Still,  the  neglected  1,310 
feet  lay  in  the  midst  of  rich  property.  Beginning  at 
the  north  end  of  the  Comstock  and  coming  south, 
toward  Gold  Hill,  Sierra  Nevada  held  3,300  feet,  and, 
although  paying  no  dividends,  was  being  magnificently 
conducted,  exploring  every  foot  of  its  territory,  and 
had  its  great  shaft  well  down  in  the  second  thousand 
feet  of  distance.  Next  came  Union  Consolidated  with 
600  feet,  followed  by  Mexican,  of  equal  size.  Ophir, 
which  came  next,  held  675  feet.  South  of  Ophir  were 
the  1,310  feet  of  neglected  claims.  Still  farther  south, 
adjoining  these  claims,  was  Best  and  Belcher  with  224 
feet;  then  Gould  and  Curry's  921  feet  of  very  rich 
ground,  followed  by  Savage  with  its  800  feet,  and  this 
again  by  the  400  feet  of  Hale  and  Norcross.  Here 
were  two  great  groups  of  paying  mines,  equipped  in  the 
best  manner,  controlled  by  millionaires,  and  able  to 
continue  operating  through  a  long  period  of  borrasca. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  curious  facts  in  the  story  of  the 
Comstock  that  this  little  row  of  long-despised  claims, 
flanked  on  either  hand  by  great  rich  and  prosperous 
mines,  should  have  sat  so  long  disconsolate,  a  mute 
Cinderella  in  ashes  of  pioneer  hopes. 

In  the  course  of  time  several  of  these  minor  claims 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     179 

were  united  into  Consolidated  Virginia,  710  feet  on 
the  lode.  Then  the  new  owners  spent  $200,000  in  vain 
prospecting  till  the  shareholders  refused  to  pay  another 
assessment.  By  February,  1871,  actual  sales  showed 
that  the  mine  was  worth  only  $26,000,  or  less  than  a 
quarter  of  the  price  of  the  machinery.  As  for  Cali 
fornia  ground,  the  600  feet  between  Ophir  and  Consoli 
dated  Virginia,  it  had  now  sunk  even  lower  in  public 
estimation.  The  entire  1,310  feet  was  a  bankrupt  piece 
of  property  worth  in  the  market  less  than  $40,000,  as 
shown  by  occasional  sales;  really  not  worth  half  so 
much,  good  operators  said,  for  an  investment  or  as  a 
speculation. 

Mackay,  Fair,  Flood,  and  O'Brien,  regretting  their 
losses  in  Bullion,  had  resolved  to  stake  their  fortunes 
upon  the  exploration  of  this  comparatively  virgin 
ground  to  great  depths.  The  four  operators  began 
to  gather  in  stock,  but  even  the  most  consummate 
skill  and  caution  could  not  secure  control  at  the  lowest 
figure— that  of  less  than  $40,000  for  the  whole  1,310 
feet.  They  paid,  it  is  said,  about  $100,000  before  they 
were  satisfied  to  announce  their  control,  by  which  time 
they  had  about  three  fourths  of  the  stock  of  both  Cali 
fornia  and  Consolidated  Virginia  locked  up  in  their 
safes,  and  they  took  possession  in  January,  1872. 

The  new  mine  owners  first  turned  their  attention  to 
the  development  of  the  710  feet  known  as  Consolidated 
Virginia.  During  1872  they  levied  assessments  to  the 
amount  of  $212,000  upon  Consolidated  Virginia  stock 
and  spent  it  all  in  development.  They  sank  a 
large  shaft  and  pushed  a  drift  north  from  Gould  and 
Curry  through  Best  and  Belcher  (1,167  feet  below  the 
surface)  into  the  ground  of  Consolidated  Virginia. 
This  was  done,  of  course,  under  especial  arrangements 
with  the  owners  of  those  mines. 
13 


180  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

Fair  was  superintendent,  and  at  last,  in  driving 
this  costly  drift  through  barren  rock,  his  experienced 
eye  discovered  a  slight  change  and  a  narrow  seam  of 
rich  ore  hardly  thicker  than  a  knife-blade.  He  ordered 
the  men  to  follow  it  with  the  drift  inch  by  inch  through 
the  vein  matter.  They  did  so,  even  where  only  a  film 
of  clay  showed  where  the  thin  ore  streak  had  "  pinched 
out."  After  a  while  the  slender  clew  was  again  picked 
up,  and  so  Fair  and  his  workmen  followed  the  dark 
line  of  silver  sulphurets  through  the  labyrinths  for 
hundreds  of  feet.  Fair  became  ill,  and  the  drift,  though 
managed  by  old  and  experienced  miners,  was  run  far 
east  of  the  clew  while  he  was  absent,  but  on  his 
return  he  went  back  and  picked  up  the  ore  thread. 
The  drift  was  now  a  hundred  feet  into  Consolidated 
Virginia  without  anything  of  importance  having  been 
found.  The  value  of  the  mine,  which  had  greatly  in 
creased  when  the  four  bold  speculators  gained  con 
trol,  began  to  decrease,  and  it  was  thought  that  out 
siders  would  hardly  stand  another  assessment. 

While  matters  were  in  this  condition  and  people 
were  saying  that  the  daring  operators  had  come  to 
grief,  the  metallic  film  so  long  followed  by  Fair  with  his 
"  fine  nose  for  ore  "  rapidly  widened  to  a  seven-foot 
vein  averaging  sixty  dollars  to  the  ton.  Cutting  across 
this  vein  and  extending  the  cut  at  each  side,  two  nar 
rower  veins  were  found.  After  a  month's  further 
progress  the  main  vein  was  twelve  feet  wide.  The  shaft 
which  was  to  reach  this  ore  body  was  being  pushed 
night  and  day  until  early  in  October  it  reached  the  de 
sired  point,  and  the  exploration  of  the  ore  body  was  then 
carried  on  with  system.  Where  the  shaft  struck  ore, 
at  the  depth  of  1,167  feet,  the  width  of  the  body  was 
now  forty  feet.  The  miners  were  not  yet  "  in  bonanza," 
but  they  felt  themselves  very  near  to  it.  Plenty  of  pay 


BAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     181 

ore  was  in  sight,  and  they  had  an  ore  body  of  unknown 
size  to  explore,  measure,  and  assay  before  taking  it  out. 
Eunning  a  drift  southeast  from  the  bottom  of  the  shaft 
for  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet,  it  cut  into  a  very  rich 
body  of  ore,  a  true  bonanza,  as  they  knew  at  once, 
though  they  were  of  course  ignorant  of  its  extent. 

It  was  high  time  to  have  some  recompense  for  years 
of  costly  and  unremunerative  exploration.  On  October 
16th  the  skilled  and  athletic  miners  began  to  "  breast 
out "  and  extract  the  ore  in  the  chamber.  By  the  end 
of  the  month  they  had  hewn  out  a  space  twenty  feet 
high  and  fifty-four  feet  across  the  bonanza,  supporting 
it  with  square  sets  of  timbers  as  fast  as  they  removed 
the  ore.  They  had  also  extended  the  drift  one  hundred 
and  forty  feet  farther  through  the  vein,  and  every 
inch  of  it  was  still  in  ore.  The  sides,  the  floors,  and 
the  roofs  of  chamber  and  of  drift  assayed  everywhere 
at  rates  that  ranged  from  $90  to  $630  per  ton.  The 
top  had  been  pried  off  from  Nature's  huge  treasure- 
vault. 

October  was  a  month  of  such  work  as  had  never 
been  seen  before  on  the  Comstock  or  in  any  other  mine 
known  to  history,  and  it  was  only  the  beginning  of 
still  greater  exploits  of  disciplined  labour,  as  shifts 
of  brawny  men,  stripped  to  the  waist,  toiled  in  the 
depths  in  the  way  that  sailors  toiled  at  Trafalgar  be 
tween  the  decks  of  fighting  ships  of  the  British  line. 
The  shaft  was  sunk  steadily  three  feet  a  day,  and  at 
the  1,200-foot  level  a  drift  showed  that  the  ore  body 
continued  and  grew  wider.  By  this  time  it  began  to 
be  said  in  Virginia  City  that  the  Consolidated  Virginia 
"  had  a  good  mine."  That  was  all.  The  matter  was 
kept  so  quiet  that  no  excitement  occurred  in  the  stock 
market.  The  directors  had  met,  however,  and  had 
increased  the  capital  stock  of  Consolidated  Virginia  to 


182  MB  STORY  OF  THE 

108,000  shares  of  $100  each;  they  soon  put  the  Cali 
fornia  upon  the  same  basis,  and  retained  control  in 
both  mines.  Consolidated  Virginia  was  taking  out 
two  hundred  tons  of  ore  a  day  at  the  close  of  October, 
and  in  a  short  time  the  bullion  shipments  were  $250,- 
000  a  month. 

The  work  of  exploration  went  on,  and  the  immen 
sity  of  the  ore  body  was  more  and  more  plainly  revealed 
through  the  winter  of  1873  and  the  spring  and  summer 
of  1874.  The  bonanza  was  cut  across  at  a  depth  of 
1,400  feet,  and  also  at  the  1,500-foot  level,  in  1874. 
Here  the  ore  was  of  such  unparalleled  richness  that 
for  the  first  time  the  outside  world  of  mining  men 
and  speculators  began  to  talk  about  it.  How  much 
farther  it  might  extend  in  depth  or  width,  or  how 
many  of  the  North-End  mines  might  finally  be  found 
to  have  a  slice  of  it,  not  even  the  skill  of  the  four 
bonanza  owners  could  determine.  But  so  carefully 
and  steadily  had  the  work  progressed  that  no  one  had 
been  startled  by  the  sudden  development.  The  richest 
hoard  of  gold  and  silver  that  had  ever  dazzled  the  eyes 
of  a  treasure-seeker  caused  for  a  time  less  excitement 
than  the  every-day  strikes  in  small  mines. 

The  truth  is,  Mackay  and  Fair  were  not  interested 
at  this  time  in  the  stock  market.  They  had  control, 
and  all  they  wanted  was  to  be  let  alone.  They  were 
not  speculators  any  more;  they  were  simply  miners; 
neither  of  the  mines  were  for  sale,  nor  did  they  care 
to  buy  any  more  mines.  Their  restless  ambitions,  so 
long  unfulfilled,  wished  to  reap  golden  harvests  from 
acres  of  ore.  There  was  so  little  attempt  at  conceal 
ment,  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  course  that  had  been 
pursued  in  regard  to  the  earlier  bonanzas,  that  it  is 
probable  this  really  caused  the  apathy  that  long  pre 
vailed  among  the  masses  of  stock  speculators.  When 


Down  in  a  Gold  Mine. 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     183 

the  capital  of  Consolidated  Virginia  was  increased  to 
108,000  shares  they  sold  at  about  forty-five  dollars, 
gradually  rising  to  par  value  ($100),  and  early  in  No 
vember,  1874,  to  $115.  Shares  in  California  were 
much  cheaper,  and  in  September,  1874,  had  only 
reached  $37. 

There  were  "  short  turns  "  and  speculations  num 
berless  in  the  stock  during  the  year  and  a  half  that 
followed  the  ore-find  of  March,  1873,  but,  all  in  all, 
the  inability  of  the  stock  speculators,  both  leaders  and 
masses,  to  comprehend  the  greatness  of  the  discovery 
seems  inexplicable.  It  is  better  to  reverse  the  point 
of  view  and  say  that  we  have  in  this  fact  another  fine 
illustration  of  the  uncertainties  of  mining.  Sharon 
and  all  his  group  of  allies,  and  the  shrewdest  of  outside 
San  Francisco  speculators,  thought  for  months  that 
the  gigantic  energies  spent  in  further  explorations 
in  Consolidated  Virginia  was  because  the  ore  body 
was  not  very  large  after  all,  and  because  new  deposits 
were  being  sought  for.  As  soon  as  they  became  con 
vinced  that  the  bonanza  was  really  unprecedented  in 
magnitude  they  hastened  to  buy  heavily,  but  by  this 
time  the  general  public  had  been  roused  to  a  sudden 
fever  of  excitement  and  the  value  of  the  famous  mines 
rose  every  hour  on  the  stock  boards.  In  December, 
1874,  Consolidated  Virginia  reached  $610  per  share, 
rising  again  in  January  to  $700,  which  made  the  sell 
ing  value  of  the  mine  $75,600,000.  California  stock 
went  even  higher,  for  it  was  said  that  the  bonanza  ex 
tended  over  from  Consolidated  Virginia  in  such  a  way 
as  to  give  the  California  mine  the  larger  part.  Cali 
fornia  shares  worth  $37  in  September  rose  to  $780 
in  January,  1875,  making  the  valuation  of  that  mine 
$84,240,000.  The  1,310  feet  on  the  lode  which  had 
been  valued  five  years  before  at  forty  or  fifty  thousand 


184       THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

dollars  was  now  worth  in  the  market,  according  to  stock 
sales,  about  $160,000,000. 

Leaving  the  stock  market,  let  us  return  to  the 
depths  of  Consolidated  Virginia.  During  1874 
the  miners  had  been  searching  systematically  through 
the  ore  bodies.  They  made  drifts  and  crosscuts  on 
each  level,  extending  their  work  far  north  into  the 
California;  they  made  winzes  from  level  to  level  to  use 
in  removing  ore.  They  proved  that  the  width  of  the 
mass  w^as  from  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  three  hundred 
and  twenty  feet,  and  that  the  richness  continued  with 
out  abatement  through  drift  after  drift,  level  below 
level.  The  ore  output  increased,  and  a  dividend  of 
three  dollars  a  share  declared  in  May,  1874,  had  been 
followed  by  others.  "  The  scene  within  this  imperial 
treasure-house,"  writes  Mr.  Lord,  "  was  a  stirring  sight. 
Cribs  of  timber  were  piled  in  successive  stages  from 
basement  to  dome,  four  hundred  feet  above,  and  every 
where  men  were  at  work  in  changing  shifts,  descending 
and  ascending  in  the  crowded  cages,  clambering  up 
to  their  assigned  stopes  with  swinging  lanterns  or 
flickering  candles,  picking  and  drilling  the  crumbling 
ore  or  pushing  lines  of  loaded  cars  to  the  stations  on 
the  shaft.  Flashes  of  exploding  powder  were  blazing 
from  the  rent  faces  of  the  stopes;  blasts  of  gas  and 
smoke  filled  the  connecting  drifts;  muffled  roars  echoed 
along  the  dark  galleries;  and  at  all  hours  a  hail  of  rock 
fragments  might  be  heard  rattling  on  the  floor  of  a 
level,  and  massive  lumps  of  ore  falling  heavily  on  the 
slanting  pile  at  the  foot  of  the  breast." 

When  the  fifteen-hundred-foot  level  was  reached 
and  the  ore  cut  into  was  richer  than  ever  before  known 
on  the  Comstock,  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  of  Virginia 
City,  came  out  with  double-leaded  columns,  under  the 
heading  of  Heart  of  the  Comstock.  Of  the  lowest  cross- 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     185 

cut  the  Enterprise  said:  "  It  has  been  bored  into  the 
bonanza  through  a  mass  of  chloride  and  sulphuret  ores 
which  excites  the  imagination  of  all  beholders.  It  is 
now  in  two  hundred  and  five  feet,  ninety-five  of  which 
is  in  the  extraordinarily  rich  ore  of  which  so  much  has 
been  heard.  In  this  crosscut  was  encountered,  a  day  or 
two  since,  the  stephanite,  a  species  of  ore  that  is  almost 
pure  silver.  At  the  distance  of  one  hundred  and  eighty 
feet  from  the  crosscut  a  chamber  of  about  ten  feet  each 
way  has  been  excavated.  Its  walls  on  every  side  are  a 
mass  of  the  finest  chloride  ore  filled  with  streaks  and 
bunches  of  the  richest  black  sulphurets.  It  looks  as 
if  the  whole  mass  grew  richer  with  every  foot  of  the 
advance."  Ores  of  this  kind  assay  up  into  the  thou 
sands  of  dollars,  but  it  seemed  impossible  that  such 
large  masses  of  silver  should  have  been  deposited,  even 
in  the  Comstock,  so  the  Enterprise  reporter  brought 
his  estimates  down  to  one  hundred  dollars  a  ton,  re 
duced  the  size  of  the  deposit,  and  figured  out  $116,- 
748,000  in  sight. 

It  is  no  secret  on  the  Comstock  that  this  reporter 
was  William  Wright,  widely  known  on  the  Pacific  coast 
as  "  Dan  De  Quille,"  one  of  the  best  living  writers  on 
mining  subjects.  He  had  been  through  and  through 
the  mines  hundreds  of  times,  and  had  really  made  the 
reputation  of  the  Enterprise  for  accurate  mining  news. 
There  was  no  one  else  to  do  his  work;  if  he  went  away 
for  a  vacation,  the  proprietors  were  pretty  sure  to  tele 
graph  that  his  substitute  "  was  getting  fooled  every 
day  underground,"  and  he  had  to  hurry  back  again. 
He  was  the  first  outsider  to  see  the  great  ore  body,  and 
his  own  account  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
he  received  an  invitation  to  examine  it  is  very  char 
acteristic. 

"  The  San  Francisco  newspapers,"  said  he  when 


186  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

interviewed,  "  had  been  saying  for  a  long  time  that 
there  was  no  ore  in  Consolidated  Virginia;  that  people 
were  getting  up  a  stock  deal.  Some  of  us  happened 
to  know,  however,  that  Fair  had  been  quietly  taking 
ore  out  of  the  mine  through  the  old  Bonner  shaft. 
One  day  he  drove  up  to  the  Enterprise  office  and 
came  in. 

" '  Those  city  papers  have  been  abusing  us  long- 
enough/  he  remarked;  '  I  won't  stand  it!  Where's 
Dan?  I  want  him  to  go  down  to  the  mine.  I'll  show 
him  what  we're  doing.' 

"  This  was  before  any  one  had  definite  knowledge 
of  the  strike.  It  was  before  the  Enterprise  had  printed 
anything  important,  you  understand — only  rumours 
or  street  talk.  When  I  had  been  in  the  mine  before 
I  could  not  get  into  those  drifts.  Fair  spoke  pretty 
loud,  as  if  he  only  wanted  to  shut  up  the  city  papers, 
but  probably  he  had  all  the  stock  he  wanted  and  had 
just  got  ready  to  tell  the  truth;  I  don't  know.  Any 
way,  I  jumped  up  and  ran  out  when  I  had  the  word; 
you  never  saw  a  reporter  go  faster.  We  drove  to  the 
mine  and  went  down  to  the  richest  place  in  the 
bonanza. 

"  Fair  said :  c  Go  in  and  climb  around.  Look  all  you 
want,  measure  it  up,  make  up  your  own  mind;  I  won't 
tell  you  a  thing;  people  will  say  I  posted  you! '  And  so 
he  went  away.  That  just  suited  me.  After  I  was 
through  I  went  to  the  Enterprise  office  and  wrote  two 
articles,  one  of  which  you  have  just  quoted  from.  That 
was  the  first  authentic  account  of  the  big  bonanza,  and 
that  was  the  way  the  Enterprise  had  a  scoop." 

A  little  later  a  visitor  to  the  mine  "  stood  where 
the  miners  were  digging  ore,  and  looked  a  hundred 
feet  upward  and  on  each  side  across  the  ore  body.  On 
all  sides  of  a  pyramidal  mass  of  timbers,  growing  larger 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     187 

each  moment  under  the  toil  of  busy  hands,  were  twin 
kling  stars  of  lamps  where  men  were  hewing  at  the  sides 
and  ceiling."  Often  the  sides  of  the  huge  cavern 
glistened  as  if  set  with  silver;  but  this  was  not  silver 
— only  crystals  of  iron  and  copper  pyrites.  There  were 
also  great  masses  of  blue,  purple,  and  white  crystals 
of  quartz,  some  of  them  weighing  many  pounds,  with 
crystals  several  inches  long.  The  miners  say  of  a  vein 
that  contains  such  crystals  that  "  it  is  alive  "  and  think 
that  the  best  of  signs  of  a  large  bonanza.  Chloride 
silver  ore  is  pale-green  and  steel-gray  in  colour.  "  Sil 
ver  glance  "  is  black  and  lustrous.  The  general  colour 
scheme  of  the  great  bonanza,  despite  an  occasional 
glitter  of  crystals,  ranged  from  bluish  gray  to  deep 
black. 

All  of  the  contents  of  the  bonanza  were  sent  to  the 
mill  just  as  it  was  blasted  or  hewn  out.  Some  of  the  ore 
was  so  rich  that  waste  rock  and  low-grade  ore  were 
mixed  with  it  in  order  to  work  it  better.  An  average 
block  of  ore  three  feet  square  contained  from  three  hun 
dred  to  five  hundred  dollars  in  silver  and  gold.  Even  in 
the  widest  part  of  the  ore  body,  three  hundred  feet 
across,  the  entire  contents  were  milled  without  assort 
ing.  Some  of  the  richest  ore  was  near  the  line  of  the 
California  mine,  where  a  mass  of  porphyry  crowded  the 
ore  into  less  space.  The  silver  here  was  often  in  the 
form  of  crystals  of  stephanite,  or  in  bunches  of  pure 
and  malleable  silver,  in  coiled  wires,  and  in  silver  crys 
tals.  There  is  hardly  any  more  beautiful  sight  in  a  mine 
than  a  "  nest "  of  wire  gold  or  wire  silver  gleaming  in 
the  dark  sulphurets.  A  few  of  the  more  exquisite  com 
binations  of  metals  and  crystals  that  occur  at  times  in 
mines  of  the  first  rank  are  still  preserved  in  cabinets, 
but  by  far  the  greater  part  have  been  destroyed,  sent 
to  the  mill  if  valuable  mineral,  or  to  the  dump  heap  if 


188  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

unremunerative.  Old  miners  in  some  of  the  famous 
mines  tell  stories  of  cavities  as  large  as  an  ordinary 
room  into  which  a  drift  will  sometimes  break;  cavi 
ties  set  thick  with  rock  crystals  of  every  beautiful  colour 
known  to  the  mineralogist — white,  pale  pink,  olive- 
green,  rose,  purple,  or  violet.  In  such  a  glorious  place 
it  seems,  even  to  the  ignorant  miners,  as  if  the  jewel 
caskets  of  monarchs  had  been  surpassed,  for  here  Na 
ture  has  the  hues  of  sapphire,  emerald,  tourmaline, 
amethyst,  chrysoprase,  opal,  and  lapis  lazuli.  Such 
crystal  rooms  are  extremely  rare,  and  more  often  occur 
in  New  Mexico  and  Sonora  than  in  Nevada  districts. 
One  ore  chamber  ten  feet  square,  situated  about  four 
teen  feet  south  of  the  California  line,  seemed  to  Com- 
stockers  the  richest  part  of  the  lode,  and  many  speci 
mens  of  ore  from  here  were  saved  for  collectors  in  vari 
ous  parts  of  the  world. 

Now  that  the  Pacific  coast  was  stirred  with  the 
great  news,  estimates  of  the  actual  "  ore  in  sight " 
began  to  be  in  order.  I  have  alluded  to  the  first  news 
paper  estimate  of  about  $116,000,000.  Next  came 
Mr.  Diedesheimer,  the  inventor  of  the  "  square- 
set  system"  and  one  of  the  most  careful  mining  en 
gineers  on  the  Pacific  coast.  He  reported  to  the 
directors  that  there  was  $1,500,000,000  in  sight,  and 
added  that  each  mine  ought  to  pay  in  dividends  $5,000 
a  share  under  proper  management.  A  little  later  he 
gave  proof  of  his  faith  in  his  own  report  by  putting 
every  dollar  he  could  raise  into  shares  in  the  two  mines 
at  the  highest  price.  Even  the  director  of  the  Carson 
mint,  with  his  assistants,  who  examined  the  bonanza, 
was  unable  to  fix  any  definite  limit  to  its  yield,  and 
thought  there  was  not  less  than  $300,000,000  already 
in  sight.  Mackay,  however,  a  miner  of  unsurpassed 
judgment,  utterly  refused  to  make  any  estimate,  and 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     189 

flatly  said  it  was  an  impossible  task,  because  barren 
masses  of  rock,  porphyry,  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
accurate  assays,  and  many  other  elements  of  uncer 
tainty  made  calculation  absurd.  He  "  preferred  to 
mine  it  out  first  and  then  take  the  milling  returns." 

The  public  made  loud  demands  for  estimates,  and 
for  a  thousand  other  details,  often  beyond  the  power 
of  human  ability  to  satisfy.  Whatever  was  said  or  was 
left  unsaid,  the  men  who  controlled  the  bonanza  were 
abused  and  misrepresented.  That  was  a  part,  and  no 
small  part,  of  the  price  they  had  to  pay  for  their  ful 
filled  ambitions.  Powerful  though  Mackay  and  his 
companions  were  in  their  own  field,  neither  they  nor 
any  other  men  could  control  the  genius  they  had  re 
leased  from  the  casket  of  the  bonanza.  The  actual 
available  capital  of  the  Pacific  slope  that  could  be  put 
into  mining  ventures  in  January,  1875,  was  not  greater 
than  $20,000,000.  To  tie  up  more  than  this  in  such 
investments  or  speculations  would  be  to  injure  and 
seriously  check  the  growth  of  the  western  third  of  the 
continent.  Now,  as  I  have  already  shown,  the  stock- 
board  valuation  put  upon  the  two  bonanza  mines  in 
that  month  was  $160,000,000.  It  is  not  likely  that 
more  than  a  fourth  of  the  stock  was  ever  in  the  market, 
but  the  entire  Pacific  coast,  as  above  stated,  could  not 
have  bought  and  paid  for  more  than  twenty  millions' 
worth. 

Then,  too,  in  addition  to  the  immense  and  probably 
justifiable  valuations  put  upon  the  Consolidated  Vir 
ginia  and  California,  every  other  mine  upon  the  lode 
had  greatly  risen  in  estimated  value.  The  prices  paid 
in  January,  1875,  showed  that  Ophir  had  risen  to  over 
$31,000,000  because  it  was  next  to  the  bonanza  mines; 
Best  and  Belcher  was  rated  at  nearly  $9,000,000,  and 
Mexican  a  trifle  higher;  Gould  and  Curry,  Savage, 


190  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Exchequer,  Yellow  Jacket,  Overman,  Bullion,  Crown 
Point,  and  several  others  were  valued  at  from  three 
to  twenty  millions  apiece.  It  made  little  or  no  differ 
ence  where  they  were  located.  Indeed,  the  theory  was 
now  held  by  most  speculators  that  every  so-called  "  bar 
ren  "  place  in  the  lode  would  prove  to  have  immense 
ore  bodies  somewhere  below  the  thousand-foot  level. 
The  total  valuation  of  all  the  mines  on  the  lode  at 
this  date  was  $393,253,440.  How  much  gold  coin 
would  really  have  been  needed  at  this  time  to  buy  not 
merely  the  floating  stock  in  the  market,  but  also 
enough  to  control  every  mine  on  the  lode  is  hardly 
to  be  estimated.  There  was  not  enough  coin  in 
America. 

Evidently,  even  if  all  the  Comstock  mines  had  been 
worth  the  price  asked,  California  and  the  rest  of  the 
Pacific  coast  did  not  have  a  tenth  part  of  the  available 
capital  to  sustain  such  a  valuation.  "When  the  trans 
fers  at  only  one  of  the  three  stock  boards  were  $50,- 
000,000  for  a  single  month,  it  is  evident  that  the  pace 
had  been  set  pretty  fast,  for  prices  had  now  become 
so  high  that  nearly  every  one  was  compelled  to  buy  on 
a  margin;  there  was  not  money  enough  to  do  otherwise. 
Naturally  the  "shorts"  had  their  innings.  A  few 
stories  that  the  bonanza  had  given  out  started  a  ruinous 
panic  at  the  close  of  February  that  completely  demoral 
ized  the  money  market.  Consolidated  Virginia  fell 
two  hundred  dollars  per  share  in  a  week.  California 
lost  sixty  per  cent  of  its  market  value.  Other  stocks 
on  the  lode  and  outside  fell  in  much  greater  propor 
tion.  The  result  spelled  ruin  in  large  capitals  to  thou 
sands  of  families.  The  Bank  of  California  failed  in 
August  of  that  fateful  year,  and  Ralston,  the  main 
spring  of  countless  enterprises,  died  in  the  waters  of 
San  Francisco  Bay.  The  entire  community  staggered 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     191 

under  disasters  brought  on  by  wild  speculation  in 
stocks.  It  was  the  Black  Friday  of  the  State  of  Cali 
fornia. 

The  public  charged  Mackay,  Fair,  and  their  com 
rades  with  speculating  in  their  own  stocks,  and  so 
creating  the  alternate  panics  and  short-lived  booms 
of  the  great  bonanza  period.  Books  were  published 
— sometimes  novels,  sometimes  bitter  essays — that  de 
scribed  with  the  sarcasm  and  emphasis  or  a  Swift  innu 
merable  supposed  crimes  of  the  bonanza  kings  against 
the  rest  of  humanity.  Time,  however,  has  caused  many 
of  these  hasty  accusations  to  be  forgotten.  The  be 
haviour  of  the  new-made  plutocrats  was  not  essentially 
worse  than  the  behaviour  of  the  earlier  groups  of 
bonanza  owners.  Mackay,  the  typical  miner  of  the 
company,  kept  himself  especially  free  from  outside 
deals.  Later,  alluding  to  the  crash  in  stocks,  he  said: 
"  It  is  no  affair  of  mine.  I  am  not  speculating  in  stocks. 
My  business  is  mining — legitimate  mining.  I  see  that 
my  men  do  their  work  properly  in  the  mines  and  that 
.,  all  goes  on  as  it  should  in  the  mills.  I  make  my  money 
here  out  of  the  ore." 

Prices  of  shares  had  no  influence  upon  the  work 
in  the  mines.  Through  good  days  and  evil  the  ore 
yield  increased.  Consolidated  Virginia  extracted  about 
12,000  tons  in  1873,  producing  in  bullion  $645,000; 
in  1874, 91,000  tons,  of  a  milling  value  of  $4,981,000; 
in  1875,  169,000  tons,  milling  over  $16,000,000;  and 
in  1876,  142,000  tons,  milling  over  $16,000,000.  Then 
the  product  began  to  lessen.  The  exact  amount  of  ore 
extracted  in  six  years  ending  with  1878  was  682,385 
tons.  The  bullion  product  was  $60,732,882.  Cali 
fornia  in  1875  and  the  three  years  following  extracted 
486,043  tons  of  ore,  which  gave  the  total  bullion  yield 
of  $43,727,831.  Nearly  $105,000,000  was  the  product 


192  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

of  the  Big  Bonanza,  as  Comstockers  have  always  called 
this  body  of  ore. 

As  for  dividends,  everything  was  done  to  increase 
them.  The  returns  to  stockholders  were  unprece 
dented  in  the  stories  of  great  mining  enterprises.  By 
the  middle  of  1879  Consolidated  Virginia  had  paid 
fifty-two  dividends  aggregating  $42,120,000,  and  Cali 
fornia  had  paid  in  dividends  $31,050,000.  A  thou 
sand  miners  were  employed;  a  new  and  much  larger 
shaft  was  sunk.  Mills  and  machinery  had  been  re 
built  and  enlarged  at  great  expense.  But  all  other 
duties  had  given  way  to  the  imperious  necessity  of  tak 
ing  out  ore  as  fast  as  possible,  so  great  were  the  dangers 
of  a  frightful  accident.  Every  difficulty  met  with  in 
removing  other  bonanzas  seemed  intensified  in  this 
case.  The  hot  clay,  feldspar,  and  ore  seethed  and 
swayed  as  the  men  worked.  Forests  of  timbers,  con 
tinually  needing  care  and  renewal,  were  rotting,  break 
ing,  and  being  crushed  together.  A  single  spark  might 
make  the  mine  a  pit  of  flame,  and  probably  would  so 
cave  and  ruin  it  that  it  could  only  be  reopened  by  years 
of  labour  and  at  vast  outlay.  Mackay,  keenly  alive 
to  the  ever-present  dangers  of  fire  and  collapse  of  the 
supports,  left  nothing  to  chance,  but  inspected  the 
drifts  in  person  night  after  night.  His  tireless  vigi 
lance  had  its  rewards,  for  no  accident  happened  until 
the  bonanza  was  fairly  worked  out.  A  few  years  later 
fires  broke  out  in  some  of  the  abandoned  levels  of  both 
the  mines,  and  the  men  bulk-headed  all  the  connecting 
drifts  so  as  to  shut  the  air  out.  The  timbers  smouldered 
for  weeks,  and  the  drifts  finally  became  totally  unfit 
for  passage — a  very  labyrinth  of  traps  and  pitfalls 
shunned  by  every  miner  to  this  day. 

After  1879,  the  close  of  the  bonanza  period  came 
with  exceeding  swiftness.  The  stock  of  the  thirty 


BAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     193 

mines  on  the  lode,  valued  in  1875  at  over  $393,000,000, 
sank  in  February,  1880,  to  something  less  than  $7,- 
000,000.  California  sold  for  $1.25  a  share  and  Con 
solidated  Virginia  for  $1.90,  and  so  on  down  the  for 
lorn  list.  How  had  the  mighty  fallen!  The  great 
bonanza,  after  yielding  in  five  years  nearly  $105,000,- 
000,  was  exhausted,  and  nothing  even  approaching 
in  value  to  the  earlier  group  of  ore  bodies  has  since 
been  discovered.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  tons  of 
low-grade  rock  have  been  taken  out  of  long-neglected 
portions  of  the  mines  and  worked  at  a  profit,  small 
dividends  have  been  paid  by  a  few  mines,  and  the  work 
ing  efficiency  of  the  lode  has  been  well  maintained. 
There  may  be  new  bonanzas  in  the  depths  or  new  grains 
of  metal  hidden  in  husks  of  porphyry,  but  nothing 
of  striking  importance  has  since  been  found.  Once 
more  the  endurance  of  the  mine  owners  and  of  the 
towns  on  the  lode  is  being  severely  tested.  California 
ceased  paying  dividends  in  1879;  Consolidated  Virginia 
paid  its  last  dividend  in  1880.  Fourteen  years  of  bor- 
rasca  have  ruined  successive  stockholders,  have  caused 
the  decay  of  once-populous  mining  towns,  and  have, 
in  short,  come  near  to  breaking  the  hearts  of  the  brave 
old  Comstockers. 


CHAPTEE  XVII. 

THE    SUTRO   TUNNEL. 

IN  the  days  when  Virginia  City  was  founded  there 
came  to  the  collection  of  "  dug-outs/7  tents,  and  brush 
huts  a  young  man  of  small  means  but  boundless  energy. 
He  was  a  volunteer  in  the  Pyramid  Lake  battle  with  the 
Indians,  and  gave  one  of  the  most  lucid  and  trustworthy 
accounts  we  have  of  that  disastrous  affair.  He  was 
afterward  in  business  in  Virginia  City,  and  in  1861 
he  built  a  quartz  mill  on  the  Carson  River.  In  a  short 
time  he  became  convinced  that  a  deep  drainage  tunnel 
was  absolutely  necessary  to  the  continued  working 
of  the  great  lode  and  he  advanced  this  idea  on  every 
occasion,  until  people  began  to  consider  him  a  crack- 
brained  enthusiast. 

The  notion  appeared  to  most  men  entirely  imprac 
ticable.  The  point  at  which  Sutro  wished  to  see  the 
lode  cut  by  a  tunnel  was  nearly  two  thousand  feet  below 
the  surface — much  deeper  than  any  miners  in  the  early 
'60's  thought  it  possible  to  carry  on  operations.  He 
scorned  the  lesser  and  temporary  usefulness  of  small, 
short  tunnels  from  the  heads  of  the  adjacent  canons; 
what  he  advocated  was  a  large  tunnel  from  the  floor 
of  the  Carson  Valley,  distant  about  four  miles  in  a 
horizontal  line  from  the  lode. 

It  must  be  explained  that  a  tunnel  run  into  a  hill 
so  as  to  strike  the  ledge  at  some  point  below  the  sur 
face  is  either  for  prospecting  and  ore-handling  pur- 

194 


THE  STTT&O  TtfNtfEL.  195 

poses,  or  it  is  purely  a  drainage  and  ventilation  tun 
nel,  or  it  combines  to  some  extent  these  several  uses. 
A  mining  country  that  contains  high  mountains  and 
short,  steep  ravines  is  well  adapted  to  tunnels,  or  adits, 
as  mining  engineers  often  call  them.  Sometimes  they 
afford  vastly  more  economical  methods  of  opening  up 
and  working  mines  than  by  shafts,  but,  of  course,  in 
many  cases  there  is  no  opportunity  for  tunnels.  Some 
times  when  a  ledge  has  been  well  prospected  on  the 
surface  high  up  on  a  mountain  the  very  first  thing 
done  is  to  run  a  tunnel  often  several  thousand  feet  long, 
so  as  to  strike  the  ledge,  and  then  work  up  to  meet  a 
shaft  started  from  the  top.  If  this  is  five  hundred  feet 
from  the  end  of  the  tunnel,  the  miners  say  they  have 
"  five  hundred  feet  of  backs."  That  is,  they  can  take 
out  that  much  ore  by  gravity  alone,  and  so  can  handle 
it  very  cheaply. 

Three  or  four  years  of  constant  study  and  active 
work  had  already  rnade  Sutro  a  man  of  note  among 
his  fellows  in  that  cyclonic  vortex  of  life  and  motion — 
early  Nevada.  He  became  widely  known  as  a  man 
of  immense  capacity  for  affairs;  one  who  was  gifted 
with  unconquerable  tenacity  of  purpose  and  fertility 
of  resource.  He  gradually  organized  the  enterprise 
known  by  his  name,  and  for  twenty  years  was  one  of 
the  most  interesting  figures  in  the  story. 

Sutro  soon  gained  the  attention  of  Stewart,  Ral 
ston,  and  others;  in  fact,  Stewart  became  president 
of  the  company  organized  in  1864  to  construct 
a  tunnel  after  Sutro's  plans.  The  first  Nevada  Legis 
lature,  in  February,  1865,  passed  an  act  granting  a 
franchise,  right  of  way,  and  other  privileges  to  Sutro 
and  his  associates.  The  amount  of  royalty  to  be  paid 
by  the  mines  that  would  be  benefited  by  the  tunnel 
was  left  to  subsequent  agreement  between  the  Tun- 
U 


196  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

nel  Company  and  the  owners  of  the  various  mines. 
After  eight  months  of  strenuous  efforts  Sutro  secured 
contracts  from  twenty-three  mining  companies,  repre 
senting,  it  is  said,  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  whole 
market  value  of  the  lode.  In  these  contracts  the  mines 
were  bound  perpetually  to  pay  to  the  Tunnel  Company 
two  dollars  a  ton  for  every  ton  of  ore  taken  out  after 
the  tunnel  had  reached  given  points  so  that  it  could 
be  used.  The  mines  were  to  also  pay  a  fixed  rate  per 
ton  for  the  transportation  of  waste  rock,  debris,  or  any 
material  from  the  mines,  and  of  supplies  from  outside, 
besides  a  certain  price  for  each  and  every  person  in 
their  employ  who  passed  through  the  tunnel. 

The  only  requirement  of  the  State  Legislature  was 
that  Sutro  and  his  allies  should  secure  three  million 
dollars  by  August,  1867,  and  should  spend  a  certain 
amount  annually  in  the  enterprise.  As  soon  as  the 
mines  had  agreed  to  the  various  royalties  and  payments, 
which  were  considered  very  reasonable  by  all  con 
cerned,  it  seemed  as  if  the  chief  obstacle  was  removed 
and  capital  could  be  secured.  At  this  time,  early  in 
1866,  there  was  unbroken  harmony  on  the  lode  in  re 
spect  to  the  tunnel  proposition.  Sharon,  Ealston,  and 
the  newly  organized  Bank  of  California  syndicate  were 
foremost  in  approval.  Sutro  was  now  arranging  to 
obtain  the  capital,  and  Ralston  furnished  him  with 
letters  of  introduction  stating  that  the  tunnel  was  prac 
ticable  and  could  not  fail  to  be  very  profitable.  Mean 
while  Sutro,  anxious  to  protect  his  enterprise  at  every 
point,  secured  the  passage  of  an  act  of  Congress  which 
denned  and  secured  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the 
Tunnel  Company.  During  the  fiercest  of  conflicts  a 
few  years  later  this  act  of  Congress  was  all  that  saved 
the  enterprise. 

Thus  protected,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  Sutro  Tun- 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  197 

nel  Company  had  nothing  more  to  do  except  to  sell 
stock  or  bonds  and  begin  work.  The  mine  owners  had 
agreed  to  his  terms;  the  State  and  the  nation  had  given 
the  strongest  possible  title  to  its  rights,  franchises, 
and  lands.  Its  plans  were  now  completed  for  a  main 
tunnel  of  20,489  feet  from  the  Carson  Valley  to  the 
shaft  of  the  Savage  mine.  Two  lateral  tunnels  were 
afterward  planned,  following  the  trend  of  the  Corn- 
stock  northerly  and  southerly  from  the  Savage  shaft. 
As  finished,  the  total  length  of  the  main  tunnel  and  the 
laterals  is  33,315  feet,  or  about  six  and  a  third  miles. 
There  are  longer  and  more  expensive  tunnels,  but  the 
reasons  that  make  the  Sutro  Tunnel  a  remarkable 
achievement  will  appear  in  the  further  course  of  this 
narrative. 

As  soon  as  the  Tunnel  act  passed  Congress,  Mr. 
Sutro  laid  the  project  before  leading  American  capi 
talists.  He  finally  obtained  pledges  to  take  three  mil 
lion  dollars  in  stock,  provided  the  Comstockers  them 
selves  would  do  something.  Returning  to  Nevada 
and  California,  he  pressed  the  scheme  upon  the  mining 
companies  with  such  energy  that  they  subscribed  six 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  granted  him  another 
year  in  which  to  complete  negotiations  for  the  three 
million  dollars.  Never  was  a  project  more  unanimously 
supported  by  press  and  people,  by  labourers  and  capi 
talists,  as  the  Sutro  Tunnel  scheme  between  the  autumn 
of  1864  and  the  spring  of  1867. 

The  reasons  for  this  general  support  were  very  sim 
ple.  The  entire  community  followed  the  lead  of  the 
mine  owners,  managers,  and  chief  speculators  of  the 
Comstock,  who  were  supreme  in  politics,  in  social  life, 
and  in  business.  These  owners  and  speculators  had 
become  persuaded  of  the  need  of  a  tunnel,  and  were 
inclined  to  become  part  owners  in  the  enterprise  so 


198  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

as  to  share  the  expected  profits  in  royalties  and  new 
veins  to  be  discovered  on  the  line  of  the  tunnel.  Be 
sides,  the  mines  were  not  paying  well,  most  of  them 
were  in  borrasca,  and  if  that  continued  long  it  would 
become  necessary  to  reduce  expenses  in  every  possible 
way. 

Suddenly  came  a  thunderbolt  falling  from  cloud 
less  skies.  The  Bank  of  California  syndicate,  now  all- 
powerful  on  the  Comstock,  changed  its  corporate  mind, 
cancelled  the  subscriptions  of  its  various  companies, 
and  issued  a  decree  of  financial  outlawry  against  Sutro. 
The  tunnel,  it  was  said,  could  not  be  constructed — at 
least  not  by  Sutro,  nor  by  his  friends.  He  was  too  in 
dependent  and  altogether  outside  of  the  controlling 
forces  on  the  lode.  A  telegram  was  sent  to  the  Nevada 
senators,  Nye  and  Stewart,  at  Washington,  saying, 
"  We  are  opposed  to  the  Sutro  Tunnel  project  and  de 
sire  it  defeated."  This  was  signed  by  William  Sharon 
and  most  of  the  prominent  mine  owners,  managers, 
and  speculators.  Senator  Stewart  instantly  resigned 
the  presidency  of  the  Tunnel  Company.  Virginia 
City  merchants  and  citizens  began  to  fight  the  tunnel 
scheme.  Thus  Sutro's  bright  prospects  of  obtaining 
a  million  dollars  in  San  Francisco,  besides  the  money 
promised  on  the  Comstock,  were  ruined  in  an  hour. 
Everywhere,  with  telegraphic  swiftness,  active,  aggres 
sive  opposition  was  raised.  When  the  smoke  of  the 
first  tumultuous  assault  cleared  away,  all  men  saw  that 
Sutro  stood  alone,  unsupported,  while  against  him  in 
organized  and  well-equipped  array  were  the  hostile 
companies,  the  hostile  Bank  of  California,  and  the 
hostile  mining  and  speculating  communities  of  Cali 
fornia  and  Nevada. 

It  was  a  strange  and  unexpected  situation.  Only 
one  man  out  of  ten  thousand  would  have  attempted 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  199 

another  stroke;  hardly  one  out  of  a  million  could  have 
conquered  his  foes.  Every  pledge  from  New  York 
capitalists  was  of  course  nullified.  He  had  to  raise 
between  four  and  five  million  dollars  for  a  pur 
pose  that  the  very  persons  to  be  benefited  declared 
against  their  interests.  He  had  to  prove  to  investors 
that  the  Comstockers  did  not  know  their  own  business. 
He  had  to  counteract  in  the  newspapers,  in  legislatures, 
and  in  Congress  itself  the  persistent  assaults  of  men 
and  associations  possessing  almost  boundless  resources 
— social,  political,  and  financial. 

Sutro,  however,  lived  for  but  one  object — to  dig 
his  "  coyote  hole,"  as  the  contemptuous  opposition 
termed  it.  He  went  to  New  York  and  again  tried  to 
obtain  capital;  he  went  to  Europe  and  saw  the  princes 
of  finance.  Men  of  science  approved  of  his  plan,  but 
everywhere  a  warning  against  his  tunnel  seemed  to 
forerun  his  coming.  Undismayed,  he  appealed  again  to 
Congress,  secured  the  attention  of  the  Committee  on 
Mines  and  Mining,  and  actually  had  a  bill  reported 
recommending  that  the  Government  should  loan  five 
million  dollars  to  the  Tunnel  Company,  taking  a  mort 
gage  on  its  property.  The  impeachment  of  Andrew 
Johnson,  soon  after,  prevented  this  bill  from  coming 
to  a  vote.  All  this  time  the  fight  went  on  in  news 
papers  and  pamphlets  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land,  but  chiefly  on  the  Pacific  coast. 
Sutro  answered  every  thrust  with  a  parry  and  return. 

Said  Sutro  in  conversation  years  after:  "Ah!  it 
was  a  hard  thing  to  see  so  many  old  friends  in  Virginia 
City  and  San  Francisco  actually  afraid  to  be  seen  talk 
ing  to  me  after  the  fiat  had  gone  forth  that  I  was  to 
be  crushed.  But  I  kept  on  fighting.  There  was  one 
time,  I  remember,  when  I  had  to  go  to  Washington 
to  save  my  interests  from  destruction.  I  had  no  money 


200  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

left.  All  the  profits  of  my  mill  had  been  swallowed 
up.  I  had  a  town  lot  in  a  little  California  town,  and 
I  sold  it  for  two  hundred  dollars.  With  that  I  managed 
to  get  to  Washington.  I  staid  there,  somehow,  all 
winter,  poor  as  I  was;  I  fought  my  enemies  and  I  came 
out  ahead.  But  they  wrote  to  all  the  newspapers  that 
I  had  bribed  Congress — out  of  my  two  hundred  dol 
lars!  " 

At  last,  in  sheer  desperation,  Sutro  turned  to  the 
working  miners  of  the  Comstock.  He  hired  Piper's 
Opera  House  in  Virginia  City  and  addressed  them  with 
bitter  eloquence,  every  stroke  of  which  went  home. 
He  denounced  the  unchecked  avarice  of  the  men  who 
ruled  the  Bank  of  California  and  the  famous  Mining 
and  Milling  syndicate.  What  did  they  care  for  the 
toilers?  What  enterprise  that  tended  to  loosen  their 
grip  on  every  industry  in  Nevada  could  fail  to  gain 
their  hatred?  He  went  on  to  contrast,  in  brief,  ter 
rible  sentences,  the  disasters  from  heat  and  fire  to  which 
the  selfishness  of  these  capitalists  subjected  them  with 
the  comfort  and  safety  which  the  tunnel  would  afford. 
The  increased  profits  under  the  tunnel  system  must 
also,  he  said,  enable  the  mine  owners  to  continue  the 
Union  scale  of  wages  without  protest  for  generations 
to  come. 

Sutro  added  immeasurably  to  the  force  of  his  ap 
peal  by  showing  to  the  miners,  and  afterward  circulat 
ing  among  them,  rude  but  effective  campaign  cartoons. 
One  cartoon  represented  a  rich  speculator  driving  six 
fast  horses  and  covering  a  working  miner  with  con 
temptuous  dust;  another  showed  "Bill  Sharon's  big 
wood  pile  "  ;  and  still  another  "  Bill  Sharon's  crooked 
railroad,"  so  as  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  Bank  of 
California  syndicate  controlled  the  transportation  and 
owned  the  forests.  Still  other  cartoons  illustrated 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  201 

with  ferocious  sarcasm  many  a  well-known  instance 
of  careless  disregard  of  the  health  and  lives  of  the  Corn- 
stock  miners. 

The  series  closed  with  a  huge  double  cartoon  that 
Milton  might  have  conceived  and  Dore  might  have 
executed.  A  few  months  before  there  had  been  a  fire 
in  the  Yellow  Jacket  mine  and  forty-two  miners  had 
lost  their  lives.  It  was  an  awful  disaster;  the  terror 
of  it  still  dwelt  in  the  homes  of  the  Comstock.  Fire 
was  yet  smouldering  in  the  drifts  of  the  mines  and 
likely  to  burst  forth  again,  when  Sutro  sent  forth  his 
double  cartoon,  headed  The  Yellow  Jacket  Fire.  On 
one  side  was  a  shaft  a  thousand  feet  deep  full  of  burn 
ing  and  falling  ladders,  timbers,  and  machinery,  a  vor 
tex  of  whirling  smoke  and  flame,  with  hundreds  of 
miners  trying  to  escape  and  tumbling  headlong  into 
the  depths;  wives,  mothers,  and  children  were  running 
to  the  mouth  of  the  shaft  or  sinking  in  despair  on  the 
ground.  In  the  other  half  of  the  picture  was  a  similar 
shaft  on  fire,  but  with  the  Sutro  Tunnel  connection 
below,  and  the  miners  escaping  to  meet  their  wives 
and  children. 

Here  are  some  sentences  from  Sutro's  speech:  "  Will 
the  people  of  Nevada  see  me  crushed  out  now?  Will 
you  not  see  fair  play  when  one  man  has  the  pluck  to 
stand  up  against  a  crowd?  Come  in  together;  let  three 
thousand  labouring  men  pay  in  an  average  of  ten  dol 
lars  a  month  and  insure  the  construction  of  the  tunnel, 
carrying  with  it  the  control  of  the  mines."  Again: 
"  The  enemy  who  has  spun  his  web  around  you  until 
you  are  almost  helpless  has  bribed  your  judges,  packed 
your  juries,  hired  false  witnesses,  bought  legislatures, 
elected  representatives  to  defend  their  iniquity,  im 
posed  taxes  upon  you  for  their  private  benefit,  and  now 
dares  you  to  expose  or  oppose  them.  ...  I  do  not  mean 


202  THE  STORY   OF  THE  MINE. 

to  incite  you  to  any  violence,,  .  .  .  but  I  do  mean  to 
say  that  you  can  destroy  your  enemy  by  simple  concert 
of  action.  Let  all  of  you  join  together  to  build  the 
Sutro  Tunnel;  that  is  the  way  to  reach  them.  .  .  . 
They  know  that  the  first  pick  struck  into  the  tunnel 
will  be  the  first  pick  into  their  graves." 

Thus,  with  tremendous  invective,  Sutro  carried 
the  war  into  Africa  and  laughed  to  scorn  the  shouts 
of  "  Demagogue!  "  that  went  up  from  the  justly  alarmed 
capitalists.  He  caused  such  a  storm  that  in  a  short  time 
he  had  to  use  all  his  personal  influence  to  prevent  an 
outbreak.  But  the  Miners'  Union  raised  fifty  thousand 
dollars  by  subscription  and  put  it  into  Tunnel  Company 
stock.  This  enabled  the  resolute  Sutro  to  break  ground 
October  19,  1869.  He  now  had  to  provide  means  for 
continuing  work.  He  had  to  fight  his  opponents  in  Ne 
vada,  California,  Washington,  New  York,  and  Europe. 
It  was  necessary,  too,  that  this  fight  should  be  aggres 
sive;  he  must  have  more  money.  In  1870  he  obtained 
the  promise  of  two  million  dollars  in  France,  but  the 
Franco-Prussian  War  destroyed  this  combination.  In 
1871  he  persuaded  Congress  to  appoint  a  commission 
of  United  States  engineers  to  examine  the  Comstock 
and  the  plans  of  the  tunnel.  They  reported  in  the  main 
unfavourably.  Such  a  report,  if  sustained  by  the  Com 
mittee  on  Mines  and  Mining,  could  only  lead  to  one 
end — the  revoking  of  the  franchise.  Sutro,  as  usual, 
rose  to  the  occasion,  and  forthwith  succeeded  in  per 
suading  the  committee  that  the  report  was  biased  by 
his  opponents;  the  committee  reversed  their  first  de 
cision  and  advocated  a  loan  of  two  million  dollars  by 
the  United  States.  This  bill  was  finally  defeated,  but 
its  very  presentation  in  Congress  was  a  victory  for 
Sutro.  Even  his  enemies  began  to  yield  unwilling 
admiration  to  his  bulldog  tenacity.  "  That  little  Ger- 


THE  SUTEO  TUNNEL.  203 

man  Jew  will  undermine  the  Comstock"  became  a 
saying  among  the  capitalists. 

In  September,  1871,  Sutro  won  his  way  to  the  purses 
of  some  English  investors  and  obtained  $1,450,000. 
This  was  afterward  increased  in  America  to  a  total  of 
two  million  dollars.  Immediately  four  hundred  men 
were  set  at  work  in  the  tunnel  and  upon  four  working 
and  ventilation  shafts.  Machinery  was  bought,  shops 
and  dwellings  sprang  up  like  mushrooms  around  the 
waste  heaps,  and  the  renewed  energies  of  this  volcanic 
man  were  concentrated  upon  a  race  against  the  Com 
stock  mine  owners  who  were  fast  approaching  the  level 
of  the  tunnel. 

There  was  no  time  set  by  the  act  of  Congress  or  any 
obligation  of  the  company  for  the  completion  of  the 
tunnel,  but  the  general  understanding  was  that  the 
main  line  should  be  finished  in  three  and  a  quarter 
years.  This  was  based  upon  the  calculations  of  the  en 
gineers,  who  proposed  to  work  from  four  shafts  as  well 
as  from  the  end  of  the  tunnel,  thus  making  nine  sepa 
rate  stopes  or  headings  besides  some  work  that  might 
be  possible  by  drifting  from  the  Comstock  lode.  But 
when  these  four  shafts  were  begun,  such  torrents  of 
water  poured  out  of  the  porous  rock  that  no  machinery 
could  be  obtained  to  keep  the  two  nearest  the  lode  clear 
enough  to  work  in;  the  other  two,  though  finally  sunk 
to  the  tunnel  level,  were  often  rendered  useless  from 
the  same  cause.  Hand  drills  were  used  at  first,  and 
the  rate  of  progress  was  slow;  it  would  have  required 
seven  or  eight  years  for  the  completion  of  the  main  tun 
nel.  Besides,  the  increase  of  heat  was  extraordinary, 
and  the  atmosphere  grew  so  bad  at  the  face  of  the  head 
ing  that  competent  authorities  have  doubted  whether 
the  tunnel  would  ever  have  been  completed  if  the  costly 
and  complicated  power  drills  just  beginning  to  come 


204:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

into  use  at  Mount  Cenis  and  elsewhere  had  not  been 
greatly  improved  by  American  inventors.  Burleigh 
and  Ingersoll  drills  soon  changed  the  aspect  of  affairs. 
An  interesting  comparison  made  at  this  time  between 
a  famous  Freiburg  tunnel,  the  Eothschonberger  Stol- 
len,  and  the  Sutro,  is  as  follows:  The  German  tunnel 
was  advancing  by  handwork  in  gneiss  rock  from  a  single 
heading  about  twenty-six  feet  a  month;  the  Nevada 
tunnel  was  advancing  in  andesite  from  a  single  heading 
one  hundred  and  five  feet  a  month.  When  power  drills 
were  introduced  the  advance  of  the  German  work  in 
creased  to  eighty-four  feet,  while  that  of  the  Nevada 
enterprise  rose  to  three  hundred  and  ten  feet.  The 
monthly  advance  of  the  Sutro  Tunnel  during  1875 
and  1876  maintained  an  average  of  three  hundred  and 
eight  feet,  an  unequalled  record  that  attracted  the  at 
tention  of  mining  engineers,  who  declared  that  Su- 
tro's  "  coyote  hole  "  was  the  greatest  undertaking  in 
America. 

Meanwhile  the  working  miners  of  the  Comstock 
were  fighting  their  old  enemies — water,  heat,  and  lack 
of  ventilation — and  hoping  for  the.  completion  of  the 
tunnel.  Mining  superintendents,  who  still  claimed  that 
they  needed  no  help  from  Sutro,  were  forced  to  ac 
knowledge  that  the  water  plague  was  almost  more  than 
they  could  endure.  "  To  chronicle  such  a  contest," 
wrote  one  observer,  "is  to  write  down  an  unvaried 
record  of  flooded  shafts  and  levels,  of  temporary  drain 
age  and  new  inbursts  of  water,  or,  more  discouraging 
still,  of  broken  pumps  and  of  delusive  gains,  when 
the  battle  was  really  a  drawn  one  and  the  pumps  could 
only  hold  the  rising  water  in  check."  The  cost  of 
pumping  on  the  Ophir  was  seventy-two  thousand  dol 
lars  a  year. 

So  matters  progressed  through  the  days  of  the 


•f. 


THE  SITTRO  TUNNEL.  205 

Crown  Point  bonanza  and  the  early  days  of  the  greater 
marvels  of  Consolidated  Virginia  and  California — the 
mine  owners  steadily  declaring  that  they  would  never 
use  the  tunnel;  Sutro  and  his  men  hammering  on 
beneath  the  mountain.  Never  were  men  and  machinery 
handled  with  greater  skill;  picked  miners  in  short 
shifts  drove  the  advancing  drills  every  moment  of  day 
and  night  and  every  day  in  the  week;  skilled  timber- 
men  propped  the  tunnel;  young  athletes  threw  frag 
ments  of  hot  rock  into  iron  tram  cars;  long  trains 
of  mules  and  cars  went  to  and  fro  under  swinging  lan 
terns.  "  Faster!  Faster!  "  cried  Sutro  to  his  willing 
workers;  "  every  ton  of  ore  taken  from  the  bonanza 
loses  our  company  two  dollars!  " 

In  1873  the  temperature  at  the  face  of  the  tunnel 
was  only  72°  Fahr.  It  rose  to  83°  the  next  year,  to 
90°  in  1876,  to  96°  in  January,  1878,  and  to  109°  in 
April.  This  was  in  spite  of  the  most  powerful  blowers 
to  be  obtained  which  were  used  to  force  fresh  air  into 
the  tunnel.  The  heading  was  nearing  the  Comstock 
lode  and  its  solfataric  springs.  The  lamps  burned 
dimly;  workmen  at  the  front  fainted  at  their  posts. 
Another  danger  threatened  them.  Portions  of  the 
tunnel  crumbled  and  fell,  crushing  the  supports  in 
places,  and  only  constant  vigilance  and  labour  pre 
vented  a  catastrophe  which  might  have  crushed  the  air 
pipes  and  killed  every  man  at  the  heading.  The  work 
men  were  two  miles  from  the  nearest  ventilation  shaft 
when  this  terrific  heat  was  encountered,  and  it  grew 
worse  till  the  face  of  the  rock  showed  a  temperature 
of  114°.  After  May,  1878,  two  or  three  hours  of  work 
were  all  that  the  strongest  and  most  experienced 
miners  could  endure.  The  mules  often  refused  to 
enter  the  tunnel,  and  they  were  dragged  by  main 
strength  from  the  air-escapes.  It  was  evident  that  en- 


206       THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

durance  was  being  strained  to  its  utmost  capacity.  Man 
after  man  dropped  down  on  the  rocky  floor  and  was  car 
ried  to  the  surface,  babbling  and  incoherent,  to  slowly 
recover  from  the  poisonous  air. 

At  last  the  miners  in  the  Savage  heard  the  blasts 
of  Sutro's  approaching  tunnel,  and  then  the  blows  of 
the  power  drills.  On  July  8,  1878,  Sutro  himself,  half 
naked,  like  one  of  his  miners,  toiled  at  the  front,  and 
toward  night,  when  the  final  blast  tore  a  jagged  hole 
through  the  wall  of  rock,  he  crawled  through  the  open 
ing,  "  overcome  with  excitement,"  as  one  of  the  news 
papers  said.  The  rush  of  hot  air  and  smoke  from  the 
tunnel  was  almost  unbearable  to  the  men  working  in 
the  cooler  Savage  drifts;  clouds  of  dust,  fine  rock, 
and  impurities,  gathered  in  the  tunnel  during  the 
nearly  nine  years  that  had  passed  since  its  commence 
ment,  shot  upward  through  the  shaft  of  the  Savage. 

The  immediate  goal  was  now  attained,  but  a  firm 
treaty  of  peace  between  the  contending  parties  was 
essential.  Most  of  the  mine  owners  still  said  that  they 
did  not  need  the  tunnel,  and  refused  to  stand  by  their 
contracts.  A  crisis  came  in  1879  when  the  Hale  and 
Norcross  pump  broke  and  water  began  to  flood  sev 
eral  mines.  The  superintendents  immediately  turned 
the  flow  from  the  remaining  pumps  into  the  tunnel, 
driving  out  the  workmen.  Sutro  began  to  put  in 
a  water-tight  bulkhead.  Either  open  war  or  a  law 
suit  carried  eventually  into  the  Supreme  Court  appeared 
the  only  alternatives. 

Fortunately  for  all  concerned,  wiser  counsels  pre 
vailed,  and  new  agreements,  which  bound  every  com 
pany  on  the  lode,  were  entered  into.  A  thousand  work 
men  began  to  cut  a  drain  channel  five  feet  wide  down 
the  middle  of  the  tunnel  floor,  and  by  July  it  was  in 
full  use.  The  temperature  of  the  water,  even  at  the 


THE  STJTRO  TUNNEL.  207 

mouth  of  the  tunnel,,  was  never  below  100°  Fahr.,  and 
it  often  entered  the  tunnel  at  130°  and  even  160°.  The 
amount  of  flow  in  1880  was  not  less  than  1,300,000,000 
gallons,  and  as  other  mines  began  to  use  the  tunnel, 
the  total  annual  drainage  rose  at  times  to  nearly  or 
quite  two  billion  gallons.  When  work  is  again  at 
tempted  on  the  lowest  levels  of  the  Comstock,  for  years 
left  idle,  the  value  of  the  Sutro  Tunnel  will  be  even 
more  evident. 

At  the  time  of  the  completion  of  the  tunnel  the 
leading  mines  were  using  more  powerful  pumping 
machinery  than  had  ever  been  applied  to  such  pur 
poses.  Perhaps  the  power  required  in  these  engines 
is  best  shown  by  the  size  of  the  wooden  pump-rods. 
Formerly  made  12  by  12  inches,  they  were  now  made 
14  by  16  inches,  of  sections  of  the  best  selected  Oregon 
pine  strapped  together  by  iron  plates,  yet  breakages 
were  frequent.  The  Belcher  pump-rod  broke  twelve 
times  in  eight  months.  It  is  estimated  that  the  cost 
of  handling  the  water  in  1880  was  three  million  dollars, 
even  with  the  aid  of  the  tunnel. 

When  his  victory  was  complete,  Sutro  retired  from 
the  control  of  the  tunnel,  selling  his  stock  at  a  high 
price  and  removing  to  San  Francisco,  and  became  one 
of  the  foremost  citizens  of  California.  He  knew 
Nevada  and  the  Comstock  better  than  most  men  of 
his  time,  for  he  had  been  a  part  of  the  whole  dramatic 
and  eventful  story  ever  since  1860.  After  twenty 
years  devoted  with  singular  courage  and  ability  to  a 
single  purpose,  that  purpose  had  rounded  into  well- 
wrought  achievement,  and  when  he  left  the  Comstock 
he  was  one  of  the  most  widely  known  men  in  America. 

Even  after  Sutro  left  the  Comstock  his  memorable 
"  coyote  hole  "  continued  to  share  the  fortunes,  good 
or  ill,  of  the  great  lode  it  drained.  According  to  the 


208  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

report  of  Mr.  Theodore  Sutro,  in  1887  the  main  tunnel 
had  cost  in  round  figures  $3,500,000,  and  the  laterals 
had  brought  this  sum  up  to  $5,000,000.  What  was 
considered  in  1879  one  of  the  larger  possibilities  of 
the  tunnel  has  never  been  developed.  Its  friends  con 
stantly  spoke  of  the  "  facilities  which  the  tunnel  af 
forded  for  the  extracting  and  smelting  of  millions  of 
tons  of  low-grade  ore  "  which  lay  partly  exposed  to 
view  in  the  two  hundred  miles  of  shafts  and  galleries, 
and  partly  still  concealed  in  the  depths  of  the  Corn- 
stock  mines.  This  ore  was  passed  by  in  those  days, 
though  worth  ten  or  twelve  dollars  a  ton,  because  by 
the  methods  employed — the  mills,  the  railroad,  the 
hoisting  works — it  could  not  be  worked  at  a  profit. 
The  Sutro  Tunnel  Company  still  claims  that  by  water- 
power  mills  on  the  Carson  this  low-grade  ore  can  be 
worked  at  six  or  eight  dollars  a  ton,  thus  building  up 
a  new  industry  without  injuring  the  towns  on  the  Corn- 
stock.  Unfortunately,  the  plan  has  never  received  a 
full  and  fair  test.  Though  the  tunnel  company  is  said 
to  have  a  great  deal  of  low-grade  ore  in  its  own  terri 
tory,  lack  of  means  has  prevented  thorough  exploration 
of  its  resources,  as  well  as  the  building  of  reduction 
works.  The  tunnel,  like  the  great  lode,  has  long  been 
in  borrasca. 


CHAPTEE  XVIII. 

OUTSIDE   VIEW   OF   A   MINE. 

ALL  this  time,,  while  describing  pioneer  life,  early 
settlement,  the  bonanzas,  the  Sutro  Tunnel,  and  many 
other  episodes  of  the  long  story  of  the  Comstock,  one 
has  necessarily  made  passing  allusions  to  the  build 
ings  and  machinery  on  the  surface  of  the  ground,  and 
to  the  still  more  interesting  details  of  the  inside 
workings  of  the  great  mines  on  the  lode.  So  much 
remains  to  be  told,  however,  respecting  the  appearance 
of  a  mine  of  the  first  rank,  "  on  deck  "  and  "  between 
decks,"  that  this  chapter  and  that  which  follows  are 
devoted  to  mines  and  mine  equipment  as  they  appear 
at  times  of  especial  activity  and  high  organization. 

When  a  visitor  goes  to  the  Comstock  he  sees  the 
ruins  of  many  old  mine  buildings  no  longer  in  use,  be 
cause  much  larger  and  more  complete  structures  over 
the  later  shafts  have  taken  their  place.  Of  the  more 
important  large  shafts  there  were  twenty-four  in  1880, 
several  of  them  huge  combination  shafts  used  by  more 
than  one  mine.  The  surface  of  the  lode  is  so  irregular 
that  the  altitudes  of  the  tops  of  the  shafts  vary  to  an 
extent  that  would  be  surprising  anywhere  except  in 
such  a  wild  mountain  region;  the  highest  shaft,  Bul 
lion,  begins  6,307  feet  above  the  sea,  and  the  lowest, 
the  old  Overman,  begins  5,731  feet  above  the  sea,  show 
ing  a  difference  of  536  feet  on  the  lode — enough  to 
make  quite  a  hill  on  a  Western  prairie.  The  surface 


210  ME  STOKY  OF  THE  MINE. 

workings  of  the  Comstock  are  on  the  side  of  a  moun 
tain  furrowed  by  immense  ravines,  where  men  have, 
with  marvellous  persistence  and  energy,  hewn  out  or 
built  up,  on  terraces  supported  by  masonry,  sufficient 
room  for  mine  and  mill  buildings. 

Any  one  of  the  great  mines  when  in  active  opera 
tion  will  serve  as  a  type  of  the  general  plan  of  outside 
works,  the  result  of  thirty  years  of  experience  under 
Comstock  conditions.  Nothing  better  can  be  found 
in  the  way  of  concrete  illustration  than  the  works 
grouped  about  California  and  Consolidated  Virginia 
with  the  old  shafts,  the  new  combination  shafts,  the 
mills,  yards,  railroad  tracks,  trestle  works,  machinery, 
and  all  that  so  well  represents  the  modern  industry  of 
mining.  What  one  sees  at  the  main  works  is  a  very 
large  mass  of  high  buildings,  partly  on  the  level,  partly 
terraced  down  the  slope,  and  still  further  complicated 
by  wings,  annexes,  and  various  additions — all  thor 
oughly  well  made  and  painted  with  fire-proof  paint. 
Surrounding  the  whole  and  between  the  wings  and 
additions  are  piles  of  iron,  lumber,  cord  wood,  separate 
buildings,  and  vast  collections  of  supplies  of  every 
imaginable  sort. 

The  main  mass  of  buildings  resembles  nothing  so 
much  as  the  union  of  several  large  foundries  and  manu 
factories.  A  row  of  tall  smokestacks  steadied  by  steel 
cables  mark  the  location  of  the  engines,  the  blacksmith 
shops,  and  the  machine  shops.  As  one  goes  around 
the  yards  and  the  vast  structures  full  of  life  and  ac 
tivity,  the  passing  impression  varies;  here  are  flat  steel 
cables  woven  or  twisted,  copper  wire,  steel  bars,  and 
hardware  in  a  thousand  forms;  yonder  are  supplies 
enough,  one  would  think,  to  stock  a  street  full  of  whole 
sale  houses.  There  is  a  powder  house;  there  are 
offices  for  clerks  and  superintendents  and  a  build- 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MlNfi.  211 

ing  where  bullion  is  melted  and  assaying  is  done; 
there  are  also  rooms  for  the  surveyors,  draughtsmen, 
and  civil  engineers.  But  there  is  no  mine  in  sight  any 
where. 

Some  idea  of  the  variety  of  articles  that  come  under 
the  general  head  of  supplies  and  are  gathered  together 
in  the  storehouses  here  may  be  obtained  from  a  few 
notes  of  purchases  made  by  a  single  mine  (California) 
in  1877,  when  over  $315,000  was  spent  for  miscellane 
ous  supplies  and  over  $547,000  for  fuel  and  for  the 
timbers  and  iron  used  in  the  new  shaft  then  being 
sunk.  The  "  regular  supplies "  stored  up  and  used 
above  ground  or  sent  down  into  the  mines  as  required 
included  the  following  large  items:  Timber,  over 
10,000,000  feet,  costing  about  $224,000;  ice,  nearly 
2,000,000  pounds,  costing  about  $22,000;  powder  to 
the  value  of  $17,000;  candles  worth  $16,000;  steel 
and  iron,  $5,000. 

If  we  take  the  total  expense  account  of  the  same 
mine  for  that  year  (1877),  we  obtain,  perhaps,  a  more 
striking  impression  of  the  scale  of  operations.  Sup 
plies,  as  we  have  seen,  were  used  to  the  value  of  about 
$315,000;  salaries  and  wages  came  to  about  $788,000; 
cost  of  reduction  was  $2,220,000;  of  hoisting,  $186,- 
000;  and  of  assaying,  $53,000.  Office  expenses,  team 
ing,  surveying,  taxes,  litigation,  and  miscellaneous 
items,  added  to  the  above,  bring  the  total  to  consider 
ably  more  than  $4,000,000.  In  such  a  mine  the  value 
of  the  outside  works  is  nearly  impossible  to  determine, 
for  it  is  constantly  changing.  If  there  is  no  mill  at 
tached,  half  a  million  dollars  would  be  a  low  estimate; 
complete  reduction  works  add  as  much  more  to  the 
total. 

Everywhere,  in  the  first  view  of  a  mine,  lumber, 
firewood,  and  machinery  are  the  most  striking  features. 
15 


212  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

The  depths  of  the  mine  in  the  last  thirty  years  have 
swallowed  up  fully  800,000,000  feet  of  timber- 
enough,,  if  sawed  into  boards  and  scantlings,  to  con 
struct  forty  thousand  two-story  houses  of  six  rooms 
each.  These  would  provide  homes  for  two  hundred 
thousand  people.  If  the  consumption  of  lumber  had 
always  been  at  the  rate  of  such  bonanza  years  as  1875 
and  1876,  the  Comstock  lode  would  now  contain  near 
ly  three  times  as  much  lumber  as  this  buried  in  its 
shafts  and  drifts,  or  sufficient  for  the  homes  of  six  hun 
dred  thousand  people.  Hundreds  of  square  miles  of 
forest  have  been  cut  to  supply  this  inexorable  demand, 
and  every  foot  of  timber  used  has  been  hauled  to  Gold 
Hill  or  Virginia  City  and  piled  in  the  lumber  yards 
at  the  works. 

The  fuel  used  during  the  past  thirty  years  has 
aggregated  something  like  three  million  cords.  It  con 
sists  for  the  most  part  of  yellow  pine,  pitch  pine,  tama 
rack,  and  fir,  and  vast  tiers  of  it  lie  piled  up  at  all 
seasons.  In  1880  the  Sierra  Nevada  furnaces  used 
about  sixteen  thousand  cords  of  wood,  and  four  other 
mines  used  more  than  ten  thousand  cords  apiece.  Such 
a  mine  keeps  six  months'  supply  of  fuel  on  hand,  and 
even  a  smaller  mine  always  has  five  hundred  cords 
piled  in  the  yard. 

The  machinery  is  of  so  many  different  types  and  is 
constantly  undergoing  so  many  changes,  repairs,  and 
improvements,  that  the  foundries  and  machine  shops 
at  the  mouth  of  a  mine  often  seem  as  if  they  had  been 
transplanted  bodily  to  the  Comstock  from  some  large 
seaport.  The  immense  power  of  the  pumping  engines 
has  been  noticed,  but  the  total  horse  power  repre 
sented  by  all  the  engines  used  on  the  Comstock  affords 
a  still  better  measure  of  the  work  done.  The  mines 
in  1880  had  engines  of  a  combined  capacity  of  21,000 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  213 

horse  power.  Single  mines  have  had  2,000,  and  even 
3,000  horse  power  in  use  at  times. 

Outside  of  each  of  the  vast  structures  is  a  pile  of 
waste  rock,  the  dump  of  the  hidden  mine.  This  is 
perhaps  the  most  peculiar  feature  of  the  place,  and 
if  the  mine  that  supplies  it  is  of  the  first  rank,  the  size 
of  the  pile  is  mountainous.  A  part  of  the  waste  rock 
sometimes  goes  to  make  acres  of  level  ground  on  which 
to  place  the  mine  buildings  and  the  quartz  mill,  but 
there  is  so  much  left  to  be  poured  down  into  the  canons 
that  the  sum  total  is  really  one  of  the  most  impressive 
things  about  Virginia  City.  Cars  run  out  upon  a  track 
extending  from  the  building  far  over  the  middle  of 
the  dump,  and  are  emptied  automatically.  They  flash 
back  and  forth  all  day,  all  night,  every  day  in  the  week, 
and  the  waste  rock  and  debris  slide  slowly  to  the  bot 
tom  of  the  great  dusty  pyramid,  on  which  no  green  leaf 
ever  grows.  Such  a  pile,  much  smaller,  and  of  saw 
dust  instead  of  broken  rock,  the  lumber  mills  make 
along  the  Mendocino  coast;  but  always  these  latter 
smoke  and  blacken  with  an  ever-smouldering  fire  that 
burns  unquenched  for  decades,  and  always  the  wild 
flowers  of  the  forest  grow  in  the  very  edges  of  the 
fragrant  hills  of  sawdust.  In  strange  contrast,  the 
waste  rock  mountains  of  the  Comstock  are  without 
life,  colour,  sound,  or  change,  except  the  rattle  of  bits 
of  porphyry  and  the  sharp  sunlight  gleaming  on 
whitening  clays  and  splinters  of  stone  piled  on  barren 
hollows  above  the  sage  brush. 

The  central  building  over  the  mouth  of  the  large 
shaft  sunk  in  partnership  by  the  California  and 
Consolidated  Virginia  mines,  is  high,  steep-roofed 
and  large,  heavily  framed,  floored  solidly  and  well, 
open  to  the  roof  forty  and  fifty  feet  above,  and  in  every 
respect  suited  to  the  requirements.  Men — dozens  of 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

them — quiet,  busy  men  dressed  in  woollen  shirts,  small 
felt  hats  or  caps,  and  blue  overalls,  are  directing  and 
operating  affairs.  Those  whose  duties  do  not  take 
them  down  into  the  mines  are  in  ordinary  citizen's 
clothes.  From  the  middle  of  the  floor,  through  a  row 
of  four  square  openings,  white  columns  of  steam  often 
rush  upward  in  huge  volumes  rolling  to  the  roof;  it 
is  the  breath  of  the  mines  below,  and  in  cold  weather 
the  warm  lower  levels  send  up  these  whirling  clouds. 
The  four  openings  are  the  tops  of  the  four  compart 
ments  of  the  shaft,  which  is  not  only  lined  on  every 
side  with  square  timbers,  but  is  still  further  divided 
by  perpendicular  partitions.  The  timbering  leaves 
these  lesser  parallel  shafts  about  five  feet  square,  and 
one  is  occupied  by  the  pipes  of  the  pumping  machinery, 
while  the  other  three  are  hoisting  compartments. 

This  is  the  top  of  the  mine;  through  these  small 
shafts  the  business  of  the  mine  is  carried  on.  The 
cages  that  move  up  and  down  may  be  compared  to  hotel 
elevators,  only  in  this  case  the  hotel  is  from  fifteen 
hundred  to  three  thousand  feet  high  and  pushed  down 
into  the  ground  so  that  everything  except  the  roof  is 
out  of  sight.  The  elevators  begin  at  the  roof  and  go 
down  to  the  basement,  past  floor  after  floor,  station 
after  station,  passageway  after  passageway,  until  the 
place  is  reached  where  another  cellar  is  being  hewed 
out. 

Some  sixty  feet  from  the  steaming  shaft  top  is  a 
large,  square  platform  raised  several  feet  above  the 
floor.  Here,  on  frames  of  massive  timbers  built  upon 
solid  rock  and  filled  in  with  cement,  are  the  hoisting 
engines;  here  the  engineers. sit  under  a  placard  some 
thing  like  this:  "No  person  allowed  on  the  platform, 
or  to  speak  to  the  engineers."  There  is  reason  enough 
for  the  warning,  for  the  lives  of  many  men  are  in  the 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  215 

hands  of  the  engineer  and  his  assistants.  These  mine 
engineers  are  strong,  modest,  manly — much  such  men 
as  are  in  similar  places  of  responsibility  in  the  engine 
rooms  of  a  Cunarder. 

Before  the  face  of  each  engineer  is  a  large  "in 
dicator  "  like  a  clock,  or  sometimes  in  the  form  of  a 
cylinder,  which  shows  exactly  where  the  cage  is;  be 
side  it  is  the  bell  by  which  he  communicates  with  the 
officers  and  workmen  on  the  different  levels  of  the 
mine.  He  stops  and  starts  the  cage,  "  slows  up,"  goes 
ahead  at  full  speed,  receives  word  about  the  contents 
of  the  cage,  and  many  other  important  matters.  Safety 
cages  are  now  used,  similar  in  construction  to  the  ele 
vators  in  large  buildings  but  much  heavier,  and  one 
source  of  accident  is  thus  removed.  The  mouth  of 
each  compartment  that  opens  through  the  floor  of 
the  main  building  is  closely  covered  with  an  iron  grat 
ing  which  each  cage  lifts  as  it  comes  up,  and  the  place 
is  sometimes  still  further  protected  by  a  railing,  so 
that  few  accidents  occur  at  the  top  of  a  mine  except 
through  careless  engineers. 

The  power  of  the  hoisting  engine  is  necessarily 
great.  At  the  Yellow  Jacket  the  two  hoisting  engines 
are  each  of  1,000  horse  power.  The  main  engine  at 
the  California  and  Consolidated  Virginia  shaft,  every 
where  known  as  the  "C.  &  C.,"  is  of  2,000  horse  power; 
it  lifts  a  cage  with  two  cars  of  rock  and  handles  a  passen 
ger  cage  at  the  same  time.  What  would  be  called  an 
average  cable  at  one  of  these  great  mines  is  made  of  steel 
wire,  woven  flat,  seven  inches  wide  and  five  eighths  of  an 
inch  thick;  the  pulleys  are  forty  or  fifty  feet  above 
the  shaft  mouth  on  a  cross-beam  supported  by  a  very 
large  and  massive  frame  which  is  built  around  the 
mouth  of  the  shaft  and  is  called  the  "  gallows-frame." 

There  are  two  kinds  of  cable  reels.    In  some  cases 


THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

the  cable  is  coiled  directly  upon  a  short  reel;  in  other 
cases  a  drum  is  used.  The  latter  is  known  as  the  taper 
ing  hoisting  reel,  which  is  a  drum  of  very  heavy  wood 
turning  with  a  wrought-iron  shaft  sixteen  inches  in 
diameter.  On  this  base  beam  after  beam  has  been 
bolted  until  the  result  is  a  structure  fifteen  feet  long, 
thirteen  feet  in  diameter  at  one  end  and  twenty-two 
feet  at  the  other.  On  the  outside  of  the  truncated  cone 
thus  obtained  iron  plates  are  bolted,  and  a  deep  spiral 
groove  is  made  from  end  to  end  in  the  iron  to  guide 
and  steady  the  cable  as  it  winds  and  unwinds.  The 
wrought-iron  shaft  turns  in  a  framework  that  reaches 
quite  through  the  floor  of  the  building,  and  is  sunk 
deep  in  solid  rock  and  braced  against  every  strain. 

A  steel  cable  such  as  is  used  on  the  Comstock  weighs 
from  twenty-five  thousand  to  forty  thousand  pounds. 
In  the  case  of  those  that  taper  regularly  toward  the 
lower  end,  where  less  strength  is  needed,  the  reduced 
size  is  not  obtained  by  leaving  out  some  wires,  but  by 
gradually  tapering  each  wire  in  its  manufacture.  The 
flat  cables  are  much  preferred  for  heavier  work,  and 
were  first  made  by  Mr.  A.  S.  Hallidie,  of  San  Francisco, 
the  inventor  of  the  cable  system  of  street  cars  so  much 
in  use  in  that  city. 

The  engineers  of  the  Comstock  greatly  increased 
the  efficiency  of  their  steam  engines,  so  as  to  save  fuel. 
The  valve  gear  on  compound  engines  was  greatly 
changed.  The  hoisting  engines  were  made  to  act 
directly  upon  the  cables  by  keying  the  reel  to  the  main 
shaft,  increasing  the  possible  speed  with  which  the 
cables  could  be  hoisted  to  three  thousand  feet  per 
minute,  a  rate  ten  times  greater  than  the  utmost  speed 
attainable  before  1865. 

Danger  seems  inseparable  from  such  machinery. 
If  an  engineer  loses  his  presence  of  mind  for  a  second 


The  Mouth  of  a  Shaft. 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  217 

while  guiding  the  swift-flying  cage,  the  men  may  be 
hurled  to  destruction.  At  the  Union  shaft,  in  1879, 
the  engineer,  a  careful  and  temperate  man,  was  hoist 
ing  a  cage  with  seventeen  men  from  the  bottom  of  the 
shaft;  when  they  were  near  the  top  he  started  to  shut 
off  steam,  but  turned  the  lever  the  wrong  way  and  the 
cage  shot  swiftly  into  sight.  Losing  his  head  entirely, 
the  poor  engineer  threw  the  valve  still  farther  over, 
and  the  cage,  leaping  upward,  gleaming  and  terrible, 
struck  the  timbers  of  the  gallows  frame  and  snapped 
the  seven-inch  cable,  which  "  parted  like  twine,"  mak 
ing  a  report  like  the  sound  of  a  cannon.  The  cable 
flew  backward  and  swung  on  one  side,  mowing  down 
timbers  and  machinery  as  far  as  it  could  reach.  It 
was  like  that  most  tremendous  accident  known  on  ship 
board,  the  breaking  loose  of  a  gun  amidships.  The 
great  building  shook  to  the  granite  foundations,  and 
men  cried  out  that  one  of  the  boilers  had  exploded. 
When  the  cage  struck,  every  man  except  two  who  clung 
to  the  shattered  frame,  and  one  who  seized  the  bell 
rope,  were  hurled  against  the  roof  and  fell  dead,  dying, 
or  crippled  on  the  floor. 

One  must  not  expect  to  see  a  close-walled  box  or 
steel  cage  for  an  elevator.  The  miners  have  only  a 
heavy  iron  cage,  entirely  open  on  two  sides  and  nearly 
so  on  the  others.  Some  cages  are  single;  some  have 
two  floors  and  are  called  double-deckers.  The  old- 
style  three-  and  four-deckers  have  now  gone  out  of  use. 
Loaded  iron  cars  come  out  of  the  depths  and  are  at  once 
hooked  to  a  cable  that  pulls  them  from  the  cage  along 
a  track  on  the  floor  of  the  building,  or  they  are  rolled 
out  by  men  in  Waiting.  If  the  contents  are  worthless, 
the  cars  are  quickly  switched  to  the  dumps  and  so  dis 
appear;  if  they  consist  of  ore  for  the  mill,  they  go  to 
one  of  the  most  important  and  complicated  of  all  the 


218  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  MINE. 

huge  structures  that  cluster  around  the  mouth  of  a 
Comstock  mine. 

The  Consolidated  Virginia  mill  as  built  in  bonanza 
days  has  sixty  stamps  of  eight  hundred  pounds  each, 
forty  pans,  four  agitators,  and  twenty  settlers,  and  is 
capable  of  reducing  two  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  ore 
daily.  The  California  mill  has  eighty  stamps  of  nine 
hundred  and  eighty-four  pounds  each,  forty-six  pans, 
four  agitators,  and  twenty  settlers,  and  can  work  three 
hundred  and  eighty  tons  daily.  The  sixty-stamp  Con 
solidated  Virginia  mill  is  a  good  type  of  the  more  mod 
ern  improved  work  of  the  Comstock.  Let  us  follow 
the  course  of  an  ore  car  from  the  mouth  of  the  shaft 
and  see  what  happens  to  it. 

This  mill  is  built  near  the  rest  of  the  main  struc 
ture  on  a  lower  level.  A  car  track  nearly  three  hundred 
feet  long  leads  straight  from  the  mouth  of  the  shaft 
in  the  main  building  to  the  roof  of  the  quartz  mill. 
It  is  supported  forty-five  feet  in  the  air  on  trestle- 
work,  and  is  boarded  over  its  whole  length  with  rows 
of  windows  on  each  side,  so  that  it  "  resembles  nothing 
else  so  much  as  a  ropewalk."  The  ore  cars  are  made 
up  into  little  trains  and  hauled  to  the  top  of  the  mill 
by  mules.  One  of  the  famous  mules  in  bonanza  days 
was  known  far  and  wide  as  "  Mary  Ann  Simpson." 
Tradition  had  it  that  she  knew  more  about  mill  work 
than  any  man  employed  in  the  mine,  and  she  had  cer 
tainly  hauled  millions  of  dollars  from  shaft  mouth  to 
mill.  In  some  mines  the  ore  is  carried  by  an  endless 
belt  in  buckets  on  a  cable,  or  the  cars  are  drawn  by  a 
cable  run  by  a  shaft  from  an  engine. 

When  dumped,  the  ore  falls  into  chutes  in  the  roof 
of  the  mill,  and  what  the  Californian  hydraulic  miners 
first  named  "  grizzlies  "  are  set  in  the  bottom  of  each 
chute.  A  grizzly  is  a  screen  of  parallel  iron  bars  three 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  219 

inches  apart,  in  most  cases,  set  sloping,  and  loose  at 
one  end,  so  that  while  the  finer  rock  goes  through, 
all  larger  fragments  roll  into  the  jaws  of  a  rock  breaker, 
whence,  after  having  heen  sufficiently  crushed,  the 
material  goes  through  another  chute  into  the  main 
ore  bins  to  which  the  smaller  rocks  went  at  once.  In 
the  hydraulic  mines,  where  sets  of  grizzlies  are  some 
times  used  to  keep  boulders  out  of  the  flumes,  the 
mingled  roar  of  the  foaming  waters,  the  harsh  crash 
ing  of  rolling  rocks,  and  the  clang  of  quivering  bars 
of  massive  iron  can  be  heard  a  long  distance.  It  is  one 
of  the  noisiest  things  about  such  a  mine,  but  its  name 
does  not  seem  very  appropriately  taken  from  the  mon 
arch  of  the  Sierran  wilderness,  whose  tread,  though 
lumbering,  is  noiseless,  and  whose  loudest  utterance 
is  a  menacing  growl. 

Keturning  to  our  typical  mill  on  the  Comstock, 
the  ore  bin  where  the  crushed  rock  falls  is  one  hundred 
and  ten  feet  long  and  the  contents  are  fed  by  chutes 
to  the  eight  batteries  of  ten  stamps  each.  The  mill 
building  stands  upon  ground  that  was  terraced  in  the 
most  careful  manner,  so  that  the  different  parts  of 
the  structure  stands  upon  different  levels,  as  is  required 
for  the  most  perfect  economy  of  labour  and  time.  After 
the  ore  is  once  delivered  at  the  top  of  the  building, 
gravity  is  made  to  do  as  much  work  as  possible. 

Beginning  with  the  power  required  to  run  a  mill 
of  this  type,  it  is  primarily  a  600-horse-power  compound 
condensing  engine.  There  are  two  cylinders,  one  of 
twenty-four  by  forty-eight  inches  and  the  other  forty- 
eight  by  forty-eight  inches;  steam  which  goes  into  the 
initial  or  smaller  cylinder,  cut  off  at  the  half  stroke, 
goes  into  the  expansion  cylinder,  where  it  fills  eight 
times  the  bulk  it  first  had.  Instead  of  going  into  the 
air,  it  then  exhausts  into  a  condenser  which  is  so 


220  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

arranged  as  to  counterbalance  the  atmospheric  pressure 
at  the  altitude  of  Virginia  City.  In  ways  like  this  the 
ponderous  machinery  of  the  Comstock  is  all  adapted 
by  a  host  of  details  to  suit  exactly  the  work  and  the 
locality.  The  main  shaft  of  the  engine  is  fourteen 
inches  in  diameter,  weighing  fifteen  thousand  pounds. 
The  fly  wheel,  eighteen  feet  across,  weighs  thirty-three 
thousand  pounds.  A  belt  from  the  fly  wheel,  which 
is  also  a  band  wheel,  drives  the  stamps  in  the  batteries. 
A  long  shaft  eleven  inches  in  diameter  goes  into  the 
amalgamating  room  and  drives  the  machinery  of  the 
pans  and  settlers.  The  engine  itself  weighs  fifty  tons 
and  rests  on  solid  masonry.  There  are  eight  boilers, 
each  sixteen  feet  long  and  fifty-four  inches  in  diameter, 
and  four  huge  smokestacks,  each  ninety  feet  high,  ex 
tending  forty  feet  above  the  roof. 

The  progress  of  the  ore  from  the  ore  bin,  under 
the  stamps,  through  the  amalgamating  room,  to  the 
retort  house,  and  finally  to  the  melting  room,  where 
the  refined  metal  is  cast  into  bars  of  bullion,  would 
require  many  chapters  full  of  technical  details  which 
properly  belong  to  metallurgical  treatises.  It  may  be 
noted  in  passing  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  gold  in 
all  the  Comstock  ore,  but  the  quantity  varies  in  dif 
ferent  mines  and  at  different  levels.  In  the  whole  lode 
the  average  amount  of  gold  is  about  forty-two  per  cent, 
but  the  Gold  Hill  group  contains  forty-seven  per  cent 
of  gold  in  its  total  yield  to  date,  and  in  some  single 
mines  the  gold  has  been  nearly  sixty  per  cent. 

The  forty-six  mining  companies  of  the  Comstock 
in  1866  had  forty-four  engines,  of  a  total  horse  power 
of  1,500,  used  for  pumping  and  hoisting,  and  sixty- 
two  mills  run  by  steam  and  water  power,  with  1,271 
stamps  crushing  57,112  tons  of  ore  each  month.  Fif 
teen  years  later  (in  1881)  the  total  horse  power  of  all 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  221 

the  engines  on  the  lode  was  nearly  21,000,  and  it  has 
not  materially  increased  since  that  time.  When  all  the 
energies  of  the  men  of  the  Comstock  are  again  directed 
to  going  deeper  there  will  have  to  be  another  great 
advance  in  the  machinery  used,  and  the  inventive  skill 
of  the  world  will  be  taxed  to  its  utmost.  If  new  and 
greater  bonanzas  are  found,  the  mills  themselves  will 
be  reconstructed  upon  a  larger  scale. 

We  leave  the  deafening  clang  and  clatter  of  the 
mills  and  turn  back  to  the  main  building.  We  have 
seen  the  progress  of  the  ore  from  the  top  of  the  shaft 
to  the  retorts  and  the  assay  office.  It  is  time  to  descend 
into  the  mine  itself,  where  the  iron  ore  cars  are  being 
filled  and  pushed  along  underground  rails  to  the 
station.  It  is  time  to  study  life  in  the  chain  of  sub 
terranean  cities  of  the  Comstock. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE   CITY   UNDERGROUND. 

AT  last  we  are  ready  to  study  at  its  best  the  great 
subterranean  city,  the  chain  of  works  for  whose  main 
tenance  and  extension,  mills,  machinery,  and  towns  on 
the  surface  were  created.  We  are  ready  to  go  down 
the  main  shaft,  stop  at  a  "station,"  explore  a  drift, 
see  the  miners  at  work,  and  hear  stories  of  peril  and 
adventure. 

The  visitor  retires  to  a  dressing  room,  takes  off  his 
or  her  ordinary  clothing,  puts  on  one  of  the  suits  kept 
there  for  the  purpose — flannel  pantaloons,  woollen 
shirt,  heavy  shoes,  and  felt  hat — is  placed  in  charge 
of  a  foreman,  and  they  enter  the  cage.  The  foreman 
waves  his  hand;  in  an  instant  we  are  dropping  noise 
lessly  into  the  darkness,  lit  only  by  the  flickering  rays, 
of  a  lantern  which  shows  timbers  seemingly  leaping 
upward. 

Pretty  soon  a  station  appears,  but  we  pass  without 
pausing.  There  seems  to  be  a  large  irregular  room 
opening  back  from  the  side  of  the  shaft.  Men  are 
busy  there,  moving  about  in  the  well-lighted  space, 
and  there  is  machinery  at  work.  If  we  went  slower 
we  should  see  a  drift  extending  from  the  station  and 
dividing  into  many  other  passages,  and  miners  and 
foreman  would  be  noticed  passing  to  and  fro  engaged 
in  various  occupations.  Every  hundred  feet  a  station 

222 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  223 

flashes  past,  and  the  immensity  of  the  work  begins 
to  grow  upon  the  traveller. 

Sometimes  the  man  in  charge  of  a  station  hails  us 
as  we  pass,  and  the  foreman  makes  a  reply  that  is 
Choctaw  to  the  uninitiated.,  for  we  are  dropping  rapidly 
away  from  the  sound.  As  we  reach  a  depth  of  a  thou 
sand  feet  or  so  the  cable  sometimes  begins  to  "  spring  " 
with  a  peculiarly  disagreeable  bobbing  motion,  which 
gives  a  novice  a  new  sensation,  as  if  hung  in  an  abyss 
by  a  rubber  strap.  In  the  midst  of  this  we  come  to  a 
full  stop  at  the  fifteen-hundred-foot  station  and  step 
off  on  the  floor. 

A  station  is  the  office  for  the  work  done  on  that 
mining  level,  as  well  as  the  point  where  men  stop  and 
where  freight  is  shipped  or  received.  It  is  walled, 
roofed,  and  floored  with  huge  timbers  and  planks,  and 
is  a  large,  well-lighted  place  crowded  with  mining 
supplies,  barrels  of  ice  water,  candles,  fuse,  powder, 
tools,  etc.  If  it  were  not  for  a  car  track  which  crosses 
the  middle  of  the  floor,  coming  from  the  level  beyond 
and  connecting  by  switches  with  all  the  hoisting  com 
partments  of  the  shaft,  the  place  would  sometimes  seem 
a  combination  of  office  and  country  store.  The  car 
track  that  extends  through  the  main  drift  of  the  mine 
connects  by  turntables  with  the  side  drifts  and  cross 
cuts.  Laden  cars  arrive  regularly  from  the  "  stopes  " 
or  places  where  ore  is  being  taken  out,  and  are  sent  to 
the  surface  by  the  station  tender.  Empty  cars  as  they 
arrive  are  returned  to  some  place  where  they  are  needed 
by  the  car  men,  and  so  the  work  goes  on  steadily,  ex 
cepting  when  shifts  are  changed. 

The  drifts,  or  "galleries"  as  some  call  them,  are 
from  four  to  six  feet  wide  and  seven  to  eight  feet  high. 
The  miners  prefer  to  cut  them  outside  of  the  vein  as 
much  as  possible,  as  there  is  less  danger  of  caves.  The 


224  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

floor  of  a  drift  is  horizontal,,  or  slightly  raised,  to  facili 
tate  the  delivery  of  ore.  The  main  north  and  south 
drift  is  the  Broadway  of  the  level,  and  sometimes  even 
contains  a  double  car  track.  The  cross-cuts  start  from 
the  main  drift  at  right  angles  with  the  vein,  so  as  to 
cut  into  the  ore  body  if  any  is  found.  Like  the  levels, 
they  are  about  a  hundred  feet  apart.  They  are  ex 
tended  entirely  across  the  lode  to  the  other  wall,  and 
are  connected  with  each  other  by  cross-drifts.  Every 
new  cross-cut  attracts  the  attention  of  all  who  are  in 
terested  in  the  mine.  If  one  cross-cut  is  in  pay  ore 
there  is  much  greater  excitement  when  the  next  one, 
a  hundred  feet  farther  on,  is  to  be  opened.  In  this 
way,  with  drifts,  cross-cuts,  and  cross-drifts,  the  skele 
ton  of  the  underground  plan  begins  to  be  apparent. 
Imagine  a  general  plan  something  like  this  on  each 
level,  and  we  only  have  to  describe  the  winzes  to  com 
plete  the  framework  of  the  passageways.  A  winze  is 
a  small  shaft  sunk  wherever  it  is  needed,  from  one 
level  to  another,  for  ventilation,  to  explore  new  ground, 
or  often,  when  sloping,  to  serve  as  a  chute  for  ore  and 
timbers.  An  "  upraise  "  is  the  beginning  of  a  winze 
Btarted  on  a  level  and  carried  upward  toward  the  next 
higher  level.  If  it  is  finished  its  name  is  changed  to 
winze.  The  only  connection  between  one  level  and  an 
other  besides  the  main  shaft  is  by  means  of  these  winzes. 
Vertical  winzes  are  in  reality  shafts;  sloping  winzes 
are  inclines;  drifts,  cross-cuts,  and  cross-drifts  are 
really  tunnels. 

Th«  main  shaft  which  connects  all  these  under 
ground  workings  is  not  always  vertical,  neither  does 
it  always  remain  the  same  for  its  entire  length;  it  may 
be  an  "  incline/'  as  the  Crown  Point  shaft,  which  is 
vertical  to  the  eleven-hundred-foot  level  and  then 
follows  the  lode,  which  dips  thirty-five  degrees  at  that 


THE  ClT?  tfNDEHGROtJND.  225 

point.  The  car  used  for  hoisting  through  an  incline 
is  a  "giraffe,"  absurdly  called  so  "because  the  hind 
wheels  are  very  large  and  the  front  ones  low,  so  as  to 
keep  the  car  level/'  One  would  suppose  that  the  name 
kangaroo  would  be  more  appropriate.  It  carries  eight 
tons  of  ore  at  a  trip.  Sometimes  another  or  "  back- 
action  "  car  is  fastened  behind.  A  ride  on  a  giraffe 
is  very  exciting.  The  track  is  well  lighted  and  the  cars 
climb  it  with  the  speed  of  a  lightning  express.  The 
giraffes,  like  the  elevator  cages,  have  safety  grips.  At 
the  bottom  of  the  shaft  or  incline  is  the  "  sump,"  a  pit 
or  well  sunk  there  to  collect  the  water  from  the  mine. 
Here  are  the  suction  ends  of  the  pumps. 

To  have  a  main^shaft  presupposes  that  there  are 
some  air  shafts  for  ventilation;  but  there  are  few  on 
the  Comstock,  ventilation  being  secured  as  far  as  pos 
sible  by  connection  with  the  main  shafts  of  other  mines. 
The  miners  agree  that  the  direction  of  a  draught  in  a 
mine  remains  permanent  for  years,  but  if  a  fire  in  a 
mine  changes  the  draught,  it  never  changes  back.  A 
"  down-cast "  has  thus  been  changed  in  an  hour  to 
an  "  up-cast."  The  general  tendency  of  air  currents 
in  the  Comstock  is  in  the  same  direction  as  the  slope 
of  the  ore  chimneys — that  is,  southward.  Each  new 
connection  makes  changes  in  the  air  currents  in  all 
the  mines. 

There  is  machinery  in  the  mines,  and  often  a  great 
deal  of  it.  Steam  makes  too  much  heat,  but  com 
pressed  air,  hydraulic  power,  and  electricity  are  now 
used  with  entire  success.  Small  engines  run  the 
"  blowers  "  to  .force  fresh  air  through  pipes  to  every 
part  of  the  mine,  but  particularly  to  the  heads  of  the 
news  cuts,  drifts,  and  upraises;  others  hoist  and  lower 
rock  and  other  materials  in  the  various  winzes,  and  still 
others  drive  the  drills.  All  this  makes  a  network  of 


226  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

pipes,  mostly  for  compressed  air,  extending  through 
out  the  mine. 

The  admirable  system  which  prevails  is  nowhere 
more  manifest  than  in  the  way  men  are  handled.  They 
form  in  line  in  the  hoisting  works  and  march  into  the 
cages.  They  leave  the  mines  in  the  same  way.  Three 
shifts  of  eight  hours  each  make  the  day  of  twenty- 
four  hours.  "  Morning  shift  "  is  from  7  A.  M.  to  3  P.  M.; 
"  afternoon  shift "  from  3  to  11  P.  M.,  and  "  night 
shift "  till  7  again.  Each  level  of  the  mine  has  there 
fore  its  three  shift  bosses.  The  clerk  who  acts  as  time 
keeper  has  an  office  in  the  hoisting  works  and  registers 
every  man's  ingoing  and  outcoming  with  the  regularity 
of  a  machine.  The  shift  bosseslreport  men  missing 
or  sick,  also  accidents,  or  anything  else  of  importance. 
They  tally  loads  of  ore  and  waste  rock,  filling  up  a 
printed  blank.  The  superintendent  thus  knows  how 
much  work  each  shift  has  accomplished.  Each  level 
has  a  foreman.  The  mine  has  also  a  general  under 
ground  foreman,  and  an  assistant  to  take  his  place  at 
night.  As  regards  the  workmen,  there  is  complete 
classification.  The  timber  men  attend  to  the  supports 
of  the  various  workings;  the  miners,  drill  men,  and 
drifters  hew  and  cut  passages  and  extract  the  ore;  the 
pump  men  and  engineers  see  to  their  respective  duties. 
Watchmen  make  regular  rounds,  messengers  carry 
orders,  take  the  men  water  or  tools,  and  gather  up  the 
dulled  picks  and  crowbars  to  send  them  to  the  forges. 

Lamps,  candles,  and  electric  lights  gleam  along  the 
rocky  aisles  of  the  mines,  except  in  long  unused  por 
tions.  Since  one  mine  is  connected  with  another  on 
the  various  levels,  the  boundary  lines  being  accurately 
marked  on  the  walls  of  the  main  drifts,  the  longer 
streets  of  the  underground  city  extend  for  three  and 
four  miles,  and  in  active  times  men  are  met  at  almost 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  227 

every  corner  and  turn,  singly  or  in  groups.  It  is  a  busy, 
populous  city,  and  its  inhabitants  are  a  superb  race  of 
men,  white-skinned  twilight  dwellers,  naked  except 
for  shoes,  overalls,  and  small  felt  caps.  They  go  about 
quietly  with  hardly  a  word  to  each  other.  It  is  a  land 
of  silence  as  well  as  of  candlelight.  One  begins  to 
understand  why  miners  have  always  made  such  uncon 
querable  soldiers  at  times  of  national  need;  these  men 
are  soldiers  already  in  their  power  to  yield  prompt 
obedience  and  in  their  capacity  to  move  together  in 
solid  phalanxes. 

On  the  Comstock  the  arch  enemy  is  heat.  "  View 
their  work! "  says  Mr.  Lord  in  his  history  of  the  lode. 
"  They  enter  narrow  galleries  where  the  air  is  scarce 
respirable.  By  the  dim  light  of  their  lanterns  a  dingy 
rock  surface  braced  by  rotting  props  is  visible.  The 
stenches  of  decaying  vegetable  matter,  hot,  foul  water, 
and  human  excretions  intensify  the  effects  of  the  heat." 
The  men  can  not  wear  woollen  garments,  they  perspire 
so  freely.  In  the  most  heated  parts  of  the  mine  they 
work  ten  or  fifteen  minutes,  then  run  to  thrust  their 
heads  under  cooler  water  from  the  pipes,  and  to  breathe 
deeply  the  fresh  air  forced  out  of  the  blowing  tubes. 
They  soon  become  so  exhausted  that  the  shift  boss 
orders  them  back  to  lighter  work  in  less  torrid  drifts. 
Miles  of  passageways  have  been  cut  in  air  so  unendura 
ble  that  candles  burned  blue  and  went  out,  and  men 
falling  down  were  dragged  back  by  their  comrades. 

About  1868  it  began  to  be  noticed  that  the  points 
of  greatest  heat  in  the  lode  moved  considerably  from 
year  to  year,  as  if  the  hot-water  streams  sometimes 
filled  one  part  of  the  lode  and  sometimes  another. 
Crown  Point,  on  the  f  ourteen-hundred-f  oot  level,  struck 
a  stream  so  hot  that  eggs  were  readily  cooked  in  it,  but 
a  year  later  the  heat  at  this  place  was  much  lessened. 
16 


228  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Bullion  on  the  seventeen-hundred-foot  level  registered 
140°  Fahr.  About  this  time  an  enormous  vein  of  hot 
water  was  tapped  at  various  points  along  the  lode.  It 
has  been  estimated  that  the  water  pumped  out  of  the 
Comstock  at  this  period  and  the  air  in  circulation 
through  the  mines  were  together  removing  annually 
an  amount  of  caloric  that  was  the  full  equivalent  of 
that  produced  by  fifty-six  thousand  tons  of  the  best 
anthracite  coal,  burned  in  the  most  economical  man 
ner.  Notwithstanding  this  constant  extraction  of  heat 
from  the  lode,  the  temperature  continued  to  increase, 
though  with  many  fluctuations,  as  greater  depths  were 
attained  in  the  various  mines. 

Specialists  have  had  a  pretty  quarrel  over  the  cause 
of  the  heat  in  the  lode.  Prof.  Church  says:  "  Chemical 
combinations  between  the  water  and  the  lode  rocks  " 
• — technically,  kaolinization  of  the  lode  feldspar. 
Others  say  that  the  water  in  the  lode  rises  from  "  where 
the  eruptive  rocks  retain  much  of  their  primal  heat/' 
The  highest  recorded  water  temperature  here  is  175° 
Fahr.,  and  large  areas  of  rock  remain  at  from  130° 
to  150°.  When  the  miners  were  working  on  the  lowest 
levels  of  the  deepest  shafts,  three  thousand  feet  and 
more  from  the  surface,  there  was  every  sign  of  enter 
ing  a  new  hot  belt  probably  far  greater  than  any  heat 
previously  known  in  the  entire  history  of  mining.  By 
the  compressed-air  pipes  the  five  or  six  men  at  a  head 
ing  receive  fully  seven  hundred  cubic  inches  of  air 
per  minute.  It  reaches  the  place  at  a  temperature 
of  about  90°,  seldom  less.  On  some  levels  each  miner 
drinks  three  or  four  gallons  of  ice  water  in  his  eight- 
hour  shift.  The  hotter  parts  of  Consolidated  Virginia 
have  required  ninety-five  pounds  of  ice  daily  to  every 
miner  at  work.  "  Even  with  this  help,"  said  the  Terri 
torial  Enterprise,  "four  picked  men  in  some  stopes 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  229 

have  found  themselves  unable  to  do  the  work  of  one 
man  in  a  cool  drift."  An  incline  in  Savage  became 
so  tropical  as  it  advanced  that  the  men  who  were  ar 
ranging  the  pump  rod  at  a  new  station  staggered  out 
half  dead  with  cholera-like  cramps  caused  by  the  blind 
ing  heat  and  foul  air.  Men  lost  their  wits,  raved,  sang, 
talked  like  lunatics,  and  had  to  be  taken  to  a  less  heated 
part  of  the  level,  where  they  were  rubbed  and  kneaded 
from  head  to  foot,  especially  on  the  stomach.  Some 
times  it  was  necessary  to  carry  them  to  the  surface 
and  obtain  prompt  medical  attendance.  Under  these 
searching  strains,  which  tried  the  best  constitutions 
until  the  weakest  place  gave  way,  men  often  perished 
in  the  drifts.  Besides  those  who  yielded  to  heart  fail 
ure,  apoplexy,  and  suffocation,  some  were  tortured  to 
death  by  falling  into  pools  of  boiling  water. 

Besides  this  intense  heat  of  the  lower  levels,  the 
hot  water  met  with  in  running  drifts  and  crosscuts 
is  sometimes  so  poisonous  with  the  minerals  it  contains 
in  solution  that  when  a  vein  is  tapped  it  blinds  every 
miner  in  that  part  of  the  workings.  Their  faces  swell 
and  their  eyes  remain  closed  until  they  have  been  some 
time  in  the  open  air  and  under  medical  treatment. 
Then,  too,  the  old  shafts  in  the  upper  levels,  long  ago 
abandoned  and  marked  "  dangerous "  on  the  mine 
maps,  have  been  left  to  darkness  and  decay.  Acres  of 
underground  passages  and  ore  chambers  here  are 
ghastly,  crumbling  ruins,  trembling  under  the  step  of 
every  explorer.  Timbers  are  twisted  and  crushed  to 
half  their  original  length  or  pressed  together  by  the 
weight  of  the  mountains  overhead  until  they  seem 
like  flattened,  broken,  entangled  straws  in  the  "  lake  " 
of  a  cider  press.  Occasionally  some  one  creeps  along 
the  remaining  crevices  into  the  shapeless  and  fast-clos 
ing  chambers  of  ancient  bonanzas.  The  foul  and 


230  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

musty  odours  of  a  charnel  house  fill  the  hot,  dripping, 
desolate  darkness;  moist  and  slimy  fungi  of  gigantic 
size  and  strange  shapes  grow  out  of  the  walls  and  tim 
bers;  fire  damp  fills  many  of  the  drifts,  and  dangerous 
explosions  occur;  phosphorescent  lights  glow  at  times 
in  these  tangled  tropical  forests  overthrown  and  crushed 
together,  and  in  winter  nights  abandoned  shafts  are 
sometimes  illuminated  with  dazzling  blue  flames  that 
might  serve  for  the  witch  scene  of  an  opera. 

The  ordinary  accidents  which  are  everywhere  in 
separable  from  mining  life  occur  on  the  Comstock  in 
every  possible  form,  only  on  a  larger  scale  than  usual. 
The  character  of  the  vein  matter  would  be  termed 
"  extra  hazardous  "  by  every  mining  man.  Three  hun 
dred  fatal  accidents  and  six  hundred  "  severe  injuries  " 
were  reported  in  the  files  of  the  Virginia  City  news 
papers  between  1863  and  1880.  It  is  safe  to  estimate 
that  from  the  time  the  mines  were  opened  in  1859  to 
the  summer  of  1893 — thirty-four  years — there  have 
been  six  hundred  fatal  and  twelve  hundred  severe  acci 
dents  on  the  Comstock.  The  years  for  which  the  sta 
tistics  are  most  complete  show  inexplicable  variation. 
Accidents  seem  to  go  by  groups  and  seasons,  and  there 
are  many  superstitions  respecting  the  subject  among 
miners  themselves. 

Although  not  the  greatest  source  of  mining  disas 
ter,  according  to  statistics,  a  fire  is  by  far  the  most 
dreaded  of  all  accidents.  In  some  mines  there  is  but 
a  single  shaft  up  which  to  escape,  and  smoke  and  ex 
plosive  gases  add  to  the  dangers.  There  may  be  eight 
or  nine  hundred  men  compelled  to  take  their  turns 
to  ascend  the  shaft  in  the  cages;  the  gas  explosions 
put  out  most  of  the  lights,  and  men  rushing  to  escape 
fall  headlong  into  winzes  and  chutes.  Other  accidents 
only  endanger  a  few  men  nearest  the  scene,  but  when 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  231 

the  timbers  take  fire  every  person  in  the  mine  is  in 
imminent  danger.  The  slightest  smell  of  anything 
burning  is  instantly  noticed  and  examined  into.  A 
man  could  cause  an  excitement  throughout  half  a  dozen 
levels  of  a  mine  by  lighting  a  newspaper  in  a  candle, 
for  the  smoke  would  soon  penetrate  the  drifts,  and 
anxious  miners  would  begin  to  tumble  out  of  every 
nook  and  cranny. 

The  amount  of  lumber  packed  into  a  mine  is  so 
great  and  the  draught  in  case  of  fire  is  so  violent  that 
hurricanes  of  flames  and  smoke  leap  through  the  nar 
row  channels  of  rock  ?nd  beat  in  resistless  waves  to 
the  remotest  opening.  It  can  hardly  be  possible  to 
overestimate  the  inflammability  of  a  well-timbered 
Comstock  mine.  Where  bonanzas  once  existed  are 
oval  chambers,  one  or  two  thousand  feet  high,  packed 
full  of  cribs  of  timbers,  with  hundreds  of  floors  of  two- 
and  three-inch  planks  on  which  the  miners  stood  to 
work  away  at  the  roof  as  they  rose  on  frame  after  frame 
from  the  bottom  to  the  top  of  the  bonanza.  There 
are  stairs,  timber-lined  chutes,  winzes,  drifts,  and  cross 
cuts,  and  everywhere,  besides  the  heavy  timbers,  there 
are  miles  of  " lagging"  behind  the  frames.  Things 
could  not  be  better  arranged  for  a  conflagration. 

Some  glimpses  of  the  famous  fire  in  Yellow  Jacket 
will  serve  to  illustrate  the  subject.  Here  the  fire  began 
about  seven  o'clock  one  April  morning  in  1869  on  the 
eight-hundred-foot  level,  two  hundred  feet  from  the 
main  shaft.  The  morning  shift  was  in  the  mine  when 
the  alarm  was  given,  and  Gold  Hill  and  Virginia  City 
were  aroused.  At  the  shafts  of  Kentuck  and  Crown 
Point,  the  adjacent  mines,  as  well  as  in  the  Yellow 
Jacket  shaft,  blind  ing  volumes  of  smoke  prevented 
descent.  As  when  a  ship  is  in  the  breakers  grinding 
to  pieces  against  sharp  rocks,  those  on  board  are  some- 


232  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

times  as  completely  beyond  mortal  help  as  if  they  were 
upon  another  planet,  so  in  this  case  the  firemen  and 
miners  found  it  impossible  to  descend,  not  only  on 
account  of  the  black,  thick  smoke,  but  because  of  the 
highly  mineralized  and  deadly  gases  which  made  men 
faint  and  dizzy  yards  from  the  mouths  of  the  shafts. 

A  safety  lantern  was  put  on  a  cage  and  sent  down 
with  a  message  of  cheer  written  in  large  letters  on  a 
piece  of  pasteboard:  "We  shall  get  you  out  soon.  It 
is  death  to  attempt  to  come  up  from  where  you  are. 
Write  a  word  to  us."  The  cage  descended  slowly,  stop 
ping  long  at  level  after  level  to  the  lowest  point  at 
which  any  of  the  men  were;  it  came  back  without  any 
reply.  A  draught  suddenly  drew  the  smoke  out  of 
the  Kentuck  shaft,  and  men  were  able  to  descend  in  the 
cages;  they  found  the  bodies  of  two  miners;  the  gather 
ing  of  Death's  harvest  had  begun.  Crown  Point  could 
not  be  entered,  but  the  smoke  and  gas  drew  away  from 
Yellow  Jacket  after  an  hour  or  two,  and  men  began 
to  bring  up  the  dead  in  that  shaft,  carrying  them 
through  a  circle  of  rope  extended  about  the  hoisting 
works  and  laying  them  on  the  ground. 

Firemen  took  hose,  and  carried  it  down  the  shaft  to 
the  eight-hundred-foot  level;  miners  and  timber  men 
went  with  them,  putting  out  flames,  propping  up  fall 
ing  walls  and  sides  of  drifts  half  filled  in  places  with 
debris  from  the  roofs.  Such  a  battle  in  the  recesses 
of  a  mine  equals,  and  indeed  surpasses,  in  elements 
of  danger  and  heroism  the  fiercest  fire  battle  that  men 
ever  waged  on  the  surface  of  the  earth.  They  played 
streams  of  water  all  day  upon  red-hot  rock  and  into 
boiling  lakes,  and  the  water  ran  at  scalding  heat  from 
the  giant  pumps.  Sudden  caves  drove  poisonous  gases 
upon  them;  they  were  paralyzed  by  fumes  of  sulphur, 
antimony,  and  other  minerals,  and  were  sent  up  the 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  233 

still  smoking  shaft,  whose  heavy  timbers  fortunately 
had  not  been  destroyed. 

After  thirty  hours  of  continuous  labour  the  firemen 
and  miners  recovered  twenty-three  bodies.  The  fire 
broke  out  again  and  again,  with  new  jets  of  deadly 
gas;  it  became  evident  that  no  life  remained  in  the 
ruins,  and  at  last,  after  several  days  and  nights  of  un 
availing  struggle  in  the  three  mines,  the  mouths  of  the 
shafts  were  hermetically  sealed  and  steam  was  forced 
into  them  with  all  the  force  of  the  giant  engines.  Two 
days  later  the  shafts  were  opened  and  more  bodies 
found,  but  the  fire  broke  out,  and  the  mines  were  again 
sealed.  This  alternation  continued  several  times,  for 
the  whole  mining  community  was  determined  to  recover 
every  body;  but  the  firemen  were  brought  up  insensible, 
even  seventy-five  days  after  the  first  outbreak  of  the 
fire.  The  miners  at  last  walled  up  the  smouldering 
fire  on  the  eight-hundred-foot  levels  of  Kentuck  and 
Crown  Point,  where  it  continued  to  burn  for  a  year  or 
more.  It  is  a  well-authenticated  fact  that  three  years 
afterward  there  was  still  red-hot  rock  in  some  of  these 
drifts. 

The  scenes  that  occurred  in  the  mine  when  the  fire 
broke  out  were  graphically  told  in  the  Territorial  En 
terprise  and  other  newspapers,  whose  reporters  inter 
viewed  every  man  who  escaped  in  the  first  cage  load 
before  smoke  and  gas  had  filled  the  shaft.  The  story 
reads  like  a  leaf  from  the  destruction  of  Pompeii- 
darkness,  smoke,  ashes,  rains  of  fire,  fatal  vapours 
asphyxiating  the  panic-stricken  people  of  the  submon- 
tanic  city.  The  Crown  Point  miners  crowded  in  the 
cage,  where  they  hung  to  every  bar  in  such  wild  con 
fusion  that  the  station  keeper  thought  many  of  them 
would  be  torn  to  pieces,  and  so  held  the  cage  until  it 
had  only  time  to  escape,  remaining  behind  himself 


234  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

and  losing  his  life.  One  miner,  hastening  toward  the 
shaft  in  the  total  darkness,  all  lights  having  been  put 
out  by  gas  explosions,  dropped  on  his  knees  and  began 
to  crawl  forward  till  he  was  at  the  edge  of  the  shaft. 
Several  other  miners  ran  up  from  behind,  and  he  heard 
them  fall  headlong  into  the  deeps. 

Outside,  the  scenes  that  occurred  as  bodies  were 
brought  out  of  the  volcano  mouth,  and,  most  of  all, 
when  the  order  to  seal  the  shafts  was  given,  were  such 
as  abide  in  one's  memory  for  a  lifetime.  Wives,  chil 
dren,  fathers,  mothers,  friends  of  the  doomed  men 
were  all  there,  adding  their  separate  passions  to  the 
awful  grief  and  despair.  Some  wept,  some  wrung 
their  hands  and  cried  aloud,  some  appeared  as  if  sud 
denly  insane  or  stupefied  and  overwhelmed  by  the 
calamity.  Now  and  then  a  woman  fainted  and  was 
carried  home  by  her  friends,  and  ever  the  crowd  grew 
as  the  more  remote  cottages  of  the  miners  poured  forth 
wild  women  hurrying  from  washtubs  and  housework 
to  where  the  black  smoke  rolled  forth,  a  sign  to  the 
cities  of  the  lode  that  precious  human  lives  were  being 
lost  in  that  vast  dasdalian  labyrinth  a  thousand  feet 
below.  As  each  body  was  carried  out,  a  wailing  cry 
rang  through  the  crowd  like  the  winter  wind  in  Sierra 
pines:  "  Who  is  it?  "  "  Who  is  it  this  time?  "  Then 
the  wives  of  the  missing  miners  came  forward  to  look, 
and  some  one  shrieked  recognition,  and  those  that  car 
ried  the  dead  sobbed  as  they  turned  back  for  another. 

Later  there  were  other  fires.  Explosions  shook  the 
solid  earth  and  hurled  sheets  of  flame  two  thousand 
feet  along  the  drifts  from  mine  to  mine.  Scorched 
bodies  were  found  beside  the  fire  track,  but  miners  in 
the  cross-cuts  escaped.  Again,  some  months  after 
ward,  the  Belcher  air  shaft  caught  fire.  The  men  were 
got  out  of  the  mine,  but  gas  explosions  that  were  heard 


*    -     X 


il 


The  Bottom  of  a  Shaft. 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  235 

a  mile  off  and  spurts  of  flame  five  hundred  feet  high 
warned  the  superintendent  that  the  drifts  must  be 
closed  or  the  whole  mine  would  soon  be  a  mass  of 
flames.  He  called  for  eighteen  unmarried  volunteers 
for  a  desperate  undertaking,  and  had  great  difficulty 
in  choosing  among  those  that  came  forward.  They 
were  hastily  bulkheading  the  main  drift  near  the  burn 
ing  shaft  when  a  large  cave  in  the  latter  changed  the 
direction  of  the  draught,  and  instantly  a  breaker  of 
white  flame  rolled  forward  through  the  drift.  Nine 
of  the  eighteen  men  "  were  hoisted  out  scarred  and 
crisp,  their  clothes  burned  from  their  bodies."  A  sec 
ond  gang  of  volunteers  took  the  place  of  the  first  and 
completed  the  bulkhead. 

A  remarkable  struggle  for  life  occurred  in  the  Suc 
cor  mine,  a  little  off  the  Comstock,  on  the  Silver  City 
grade.  Some  miners  who  wished  to  "  thaw  out  "  their 
frozen  giant  powder  put  a  dozen  cartridges  on  the  en 
gine  boilers  and  went  away.  Pretty  soon  the  cartridges 
began  to  burn,  throwing  out  jets  of  flame  that  rose  to 
the  woodwork,  and  so  the  hoisting  works  blazed  up 
in  a  moment.  The  mine  was  a  small  one,  and  little 
work  was  being  done  at  the  time;  two  men  were  down 
in  the  shaft,  five  hundred  feet  below,  and  the  hoisting 
tub  was  there  also.  The  car  man  and  engineer  shouted 
to  the  men  and  shook  the  cable,  but  failed  to  make 
them  understand  that  they  were  in  great  peril.  Then 
the  fire  drove  everybody  out  of  the  building.  It  was 
soon  in  flames  and  fell  in,  and  the  timbers  of  the  shaft 
itself  began  to  ignite.  Of  course  every  one  knew  that 
there  was  no  hope  after  that  for  the  men  below,  who 
could  not  escape  suffocation.  But  two  days  later,  when 
the  fire  was  put  out  and  a  gang  of  miners  went  down, 
they  found  the  bodies  of  the  two  men  "  at  the  pump 
station,"  a  recess  in  the  side  of  the  shaft.  They  had 


236  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

actually  climbed  two  hundred  and  sixty-five  feet  by 
clinging  like  snails  to  the  corner  timbers  and  slight 
crevices.  Foot  by  foot  their  marvellous  journey  was 
traced,  and  it  still  remains  an  unequalled  feat  in  the 
annals  of  mining.  They  were  in  perfect  safety  in  the 
sheltered  alcove  until  the  poisonous  gas  from  the  burn 
ing  pine  rose  to  that  point  and  destroyed  them.  A 
polite  coroners  jury  a  few  days  later  said:  "  We  must 
strongly  deprecate  the  custom  prevalent  in  many  mines 
of  'warming  giant  powder  on  the  boilers  about  the 
works." 

The  spirit  in  which  the  miners  meet  peril  and  death 
is  almost  uniformly  the  cool,  careless  fatalism  of  many 
a  war  veteran.  Some  of  their  grim  jests  still  ring  like 
the  sayings  of  old  Norse  sea  kings.  A  premature  blast 
in  one  of  the  mines  once  drove  a  foot-long  splinter 
through  the  hand  of  a  timber  man,  through  the  lag 
ging  he  was  working  on,  and  into  the  soft  rock.  "  We 
shan't  need  a  spragg  at  this  end,  Bill!  "  was  his  cool 
remark.  A  "  spragg,"  be  it  understood,  is  a  square 
stick  of  wood  six  or  eight  inches  long.  One  end  is 
put  against  the  posts  of  the  timbering;  the  other  end, 
slightly  sharpened,  is  against  the  heavy  planks,  called 
lagging.  The  pressure  of  the  walls  upon  the  planks 
gradually  forces  them  out,  and  the  spraggs  go  steadily 
through  into  the  rock  behind.  When  the  planks  reach 
the  post  the  men  in  charge  take  picks,  relieve  the  pres 
sure,  and  put  in  new  spraggs.  This  system  keeps  the 
main  timbers  from  being  broken. 

A  still  more  famous  case  of  nerve  was  furnished 
by  a  brawny  young  Cornishman  who  fell  into  a  main 
shaft.  Twenty  feet  down  he  came  to  the  pump  station 
out  of  which  the  old-style  pump  "  bob-nose "  pro 
jected  a  little,  and  by  agility,  strength,  and  good  for 
tune  he  was  enabled  to  seize  it  with  both  hands,  and  so 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  237 

hung  over  the  shaft,  swinging  from  the  slippery  iron. 
He  made  no  outcry,  knowing  that  he  had  been  seen  to 
fall  and  that  men  would  look  down  the  shaft.  When 
a  bucket  was  lowered  and  he  was  brought  up  he  cast 
a  careless  glance  over  his  shoulder  as  he  walked  off  and 
said:  "  If  ee  ha'nt  caught  hold  of  the  bob  ee'd  ha'  been 
scattered  all  abroad  by  now!  " 

We  have  thus  studied  the  toils  and  adventures  of 
the  citizens  of  the  real  Comstock,  the  men  of  shafts, 
drifts,  winzes,  and  ore  chambers.  This  strange  hidden 
realm  begins  to  take  shape  in  one's  mind.  It  is  truly 
a  city,  but  it  is  not  like  the  cities  of  the  surface,  nor 
can  it  be  even  measurably  described  by  the  terms  and 
phrases  that  apply  to  such  cities.  If  the  California 
and  Consolidated  Virginia  mines  could  be  taken  out 
of  the  great  lode  and  set  on  a  plain,  they  would  cover  a 
parallelogram  thirteen  hundred  and  ten  feet  one  way 
and  about  three  thousand  feet  the  other.  The  height 
to  which  they  would  rise  would  be  over  three  thousand 
feet.  Through  the  mass  around  and  within  it  one 
would  see  so  many  galleries  and  pathways  that  to  re 
move  the  whole  body  of  material  piecemeal  would  seem 
easier  than  to  construct  a  tithe  of  them.  Everywhere 
there  are  angles,  curves,  and  irregularities,  as  veins 
of  ore  have  been  followed.  Everywhere  the  mass  of 
soft,  mineralized  matter  mingled  with  hardest  rock  is 
bored,  patched  together,  upheld  by  braces,  and  kept 
from  instant  collapse.  These  mines,  moreover,  are 
only  two  out  of  many.  The  whole  lode,  if  plucked 
forth  by  the  roots,  would  present  similar  characteris 
tics,  and,  more  than  this,  it  would  lean  like  the  Pisan 
tower,  and  the  sides  would  run  in  and  out  like  a  top 
pling,  wave-worn  cliff  full  of  coves  and  promontories. 

But  the  Comstock  seems  to  me  a  more  impressive 
fact  just  as  it  stands,  walled  in  by  mountains  and  rooted 


238  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

BO  deep  that  men  may  toil  there  through  centuries 
to  come  without  reaching  the  bottom  of  its  "  fissure 
vein."  After  meditating  upon  the  paths,  lanes,  alleys, 
roads,  crossroads,  and  highways  of  the  great  group  of 
mines,  rising  by  stairs  on  stairs,  from  level  to  level, 
one  is  ready  to  grasp  the  completed  conception  of  the 
labyrinthian  wilderness,  where,  in  the  midst  of  aban 
doned  acres  of  caves,  pitfalls,  and  jungles  of  fungi- 
overgrown  timbers,  lie  masses  of  ore  and  yet-undiscov 
ered  bonanzas. 

Imagine,  then,  a  city  built  by  fallen  angels  or  by 
the  jinn  and  genii  of  Arabian  legend.  They  have  riven 
the  Himalayas,  the  roof -ridge  of  the  world,  and  in  the 
vast  cleft  they  have  builded  with  stones  and  metals, 
cell  by  cell,  as  the  honeybee  builds.  Millions  of  years 
the  dwellers  have  toiled  until  the  cleft,  from  palm- 
land  levels  to  where  deodars  grow  in  the  edges  of  snow 
drifts,  is  full  and  running  over.  At  last  the  kingdom 
of  the  genii  is  overthrown  by  some  superhuman  hero. 
Wrath  fully,  then,  the  defeated  ones  rain  fire  and  molten 
rock  down  the  Himalayan  cleft,  pile  mountains  over 
head,  and  pass,  black- winged,  out  of  sight  forever! 
Still,  traditions  of  the  wondrous  city  live  on  in  singers' 
tales,  mingled  with  stories  of  heroes  and  the  gods  in 
their  high  places;  still,  men's  imaginations  cling  to 
the  legend.  Then,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  treasure- 
seekers  come,  tracking  up  a  barren  canon  the  faint 
spatter  of  molten  drops  blown  from  towers  of  gold 
in  the  wondrous  city's  conflagration.  They  tunnel 
into  the  cleft,  they  sink  shafts  into  measureless  depths, 
still  molten  with  rains  of  fire,  until  they  find  and  empty 
the  palace  rooms  of  the  princes  and  monarchs  of  a  race 
that  existed  before  the  generations  of  men. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

THE   MINING   COMMUNITY. 

GKEATER  than  the  city  are  the  dwellers  therein; 
finer  than  all  incidents  and  illustrations  of  the  magni 
tude  and  material  wealth  of  the  Comstock,  are  lessons 
of  human  faith,  courage,  and  ability  to  conquer  every 
obstacle,  that  are  taught  by  the  story  of  the  mines. 
For  a  period  of  time  as  long  as  an  average  life  the 
famous  group  has  been  training  men  to  be  miners;  has 
been  creating  specialized  types  of  character  in  the 
midst  of  a  peculiarly  courageous  and  intelligent  com 
munity. 

Along  the  Comstock,  year  after  year,  the  bonds  of 
common  interest  and  sectional  pride  drew  men  closer 
together  in  spite  of  strenuous  rivalries.  Periods  of 
bonanza  replaced  pioneer  cabins  with  edifices  of  brick 
and  stone,  terraced  upon  the  hillsides.  Periods  of 
borrasca  welded  social  ties  among  those  whose  fortunes 
were  inseparable  from  that  of  the  Comstock,  even  as  a 
trip  hammer  unites  steel  blooms  into  armour-plates  for 
girding  iron  leviathans  of  war.  Men,  women,  and  chil 
dren  learned  to  love  the  keen  excitements,  the  splendid 
physical  activities,  the  perpetual  outpourings  of  energy, 
the  virile,  superb,  passionate  life  of  the  mining  camp. 

Everywhere,  almost  unheeded,  in  the  bustling,  rest 
less  community,  were  the  hidden  elements  of  literature, 
but,  strangely  enough,  no  world-famous  tale  of  the 
Comstock  has  yet  sprung  from  the  fertile  soil.  Here 

239 


240        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

and  there  a  few  Californians  have  attempted  to  picture 
the  changing  life  of  early  Nevada  before  it  passed  away, 
and  brilliant  local  writers  have  photographed  episodes 
and  single  characters.  But  no  great  novelist  seems 
to  have  recognised  the  preciousness  of  the  fast-passing 
opportunity.  Some  day  the  story-teller  will  come  who 
can  add  another  masterpiece  to  literature,  as  one  long 
dead  but  not  forgotten  once  went  to  a  crumbling  adobe 
house  and  a  poor,  despised  race,  and  there  wrote 
Eamona. 

Said  a  man  who  knew  and  loved  the  Comstocker: 
"  The  person  who  only  judges  from  the  exterior  has 
no  business  in  the  camp.  He  will  be  picked  up  a  little 
too  often  for  pleasure  if  not  set  down  a  little  too  heavily 
for  comfort.  A  man  can  have  any  game  he  wants, 
whether  played  with  a  pack  of  cards  or  with  pistols, 
whether  straight  from  the  shoulder,  or  in  kindness 
from  the  heart."  Dr.  Gaily  can  also  be  called  as  wit 
ness  to  the  characteristics  of  the  men  of  these  and  other 
mountain  camps:  "They  are  not  good  people  in  the 
Sunday-school  view,  but  there  is  a  spirit  of  charity  and 
a  Saxon  sense  of  fair  play  about  them  which  is  a  sub 
stitute.  A  deliberate  insult  to  a  woman  or  a  child  is 
a  bid  for  instant  death,  and  the  general  verdict  is, 
6  Served  him  right! '  But  no  man  here  is  any  other 
able-bodied  person's  guardian.  Whoever  wishes  to  go 
to  the  dogs,  goes  to  the  dogs.  There  is  no  restraint, 
or,  as  they  express  it, '  There  is  nobody  holding  you.' ': 

Mining  camps,  large  and  small,  openly  wear  their 
worst  side  out.  Whatever  vice  exists  is  open  to  the  sun. 
With  much  that  is  evil,  there  is  also  much  that  is  noble, 
and  even  heroic.  Meanness  is  very  scarce,  and  shams 
of  any  sort  are  instantly  punctured.  "  What  do  you 
know?  "  is  a  common  morning  salutation,  and  "  What 
can  you  do?"  expresses  the  habitual  attitude  of  the 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY. 

camp  toward  every  stranger.  Everywhere  among  this 
great  and  peculiar  race  of  men  one  finds  a  graphic, 
broadly  humorous,  or  quaintly  burlesque  use  of  words; 
never  in  any  part  of  the  world  has  language  been  more 
perfectly  fitted  to  daily  needs.  Here  are  grotesque 
idioms  and  ancient  yet  living  dialects;  here,  also,  is 
Shakespeare's  English,  new-minted  by  the  men  of  the 
camp  into  homely  phrases  that  have  become  American. 
The  frontiersman  is  here,  but  the  backwoodsman  has 
been  eliminated.  One  notices  with  surprise  that  these 
men,  and  in  fact  all  others  in  the  camp,  seem  endowed 
with  an  undismayed  spirit  of  humorous  buoyancy, 
curiously  common  here  to  all  temperaments,  climatic, 
consonant  with  the  clearness,  dryness,  and  purity  of 
the  atmosphere,  and  yet  so  individualized  as  to  be  full 
of  a  rare  and  inexpressible  charm. 

As  for  the  workers  in  and  about  the  mines,  the 
minutely'  classified  body  of  men  that  form  the  real 
nucleus  of  the  camp  and  give  it  these  distinctive  fea 
tures,  no  other  group  of  men  in  America  are  more  com 
pactly  organized,  none  show  a  keener  intelligence,  and 
none  are  deeper-chested,  stronger-limbed  mountain 
eers.  Their  abounding  vitality  and  cool,  steady  cour 
age  (in  the  mining-camp  term,  "  sand  ")  have  received 
abundant  illustration  in  the  preceding  pages,  but  noth 
ing  has  been  said  of  their  love  and  tenderness  for  each 
other  in  times  of  need.  Men  become  "  pards,"  and 
each  one  lives  for  the  other,  willing  to  die  for  him  if 
there  is  a  chance,  and  that  may  come  at  any  moment. 
They  take  care  of  the  sick  with  the  gentleness  and  pa 
tience  of  trained  hospital  nurses.  It  is  a  heroic  fellow 
ship  at  its  best — the  social  order  of  this  masterful, 
masculine  community. 

The  underground  miner  as  he  goes  about  the 
street  is  a  well-dressed,  clean  person,  who  takes  a 


242  TSE  STOEY  OF  THE  MINE. 

daily  bath  and  changes  his  clothing  twice  a  day 
— once  when  his  shift  goes  on,  and  once  when  it 
comes  off.  He  is  calmly  proud  of  his  occupation, 
in  the  purely  professional  spirit,  but  personally  he  is 
as  modest  a  man  as  one  could  wish  to  see;  it  is  not  at 
all  his  fault  that  he  is  in  his  way  an  aristocrat  among 
working  men.  His  life  has  made  him  a  sane,  thought 
ful,  responsible  person  as  far  as  mining  goes,  no  matter 
how  lawless  of  social  conventions  he  may  choose  to  be 
in  other  directions.  He  knows  himself  responsible  for 
the  lives  of  his  fellow-workmen;  his  own  life  hangs 
upon  the  honesty  of  another's  work,  and  that  other's 
life  hangs  upon  the  honesty  of  his  own  work.  A  single 
careless  prop,  a  defective  bolt  or  timber,  any  neglect 
or  lack  of  thoroughness,  any  laziness  or  ignorance,  is 
sure  to  bring  calamity,  and  may  bring  death.  There 
fore  this  responsible  professional  personage  is  as  stern 
as  Rhadamanthus  in  his  judgments  upon  all  that  per 
tains  to  his  business. 

No  incompetent  foreman  can  govern  such  men. 
In  a  great  fire  at  Crown  Point,  Senator  John  P.  Jones, 
then  superintendent,  found  it  necessary  to  cut  a  pipe 
on  the  seven-hundred-foot  level.  It  was  midnight,  and 
almost  continuously  for  five  days  and  nights  he  had 
been  foremost  in  leading  the  dripping  firemen  and  half- 
naked  miners  through  smoking,  flaming,  steaming 
drifts.  Jones  and  a  young  man  went  alone  into  the 
level  to  drive  a  plate  of  steel  through  the  pipe.  They 
worked  for  fifteen  minutes  in  an  atmosphere  so  deadly 
that  the  lights  almost  failed  them,  and  the  miner  could 
hardly  hold  the  plate.  The  lights  went  out  as  the  last 
stroke  fell,  and  Jones  carried  his  fainting,  half-delirious 
assistant  to  the  main  shaft  and  held  him  during  the 
ascent.  When  the  hoisting  room  was  reached  he 
dropped  his  burden  on  the  floor  and  staggered  blindly 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  243 

to  a  bunk.  Such  were  the  leaders  of  the  Comstock 
miners. 

One  can  hardly  understand  the  curious  ebb  and 
flow  of  mining  life  in  its  mingling  of  admirable  reserve 
with  dangerous  turbulence  without  long  meditation 
upon  that  troglodytic  existence  often  so  singularly 
barren  of  colour  and  variety,  and  yet  so  inexorable  in 
its  demands  upon  heart,  hand,  and  brain.  Men  might 
toil  with  dull  persistency  for  months  in  a  dark,  dripping 
vault,  picking  down  a  wall  and  wheeling  out  rock;  one 
twist  of  the  pick  might  fill  the  drift  with  a  foaming, 
resistless  river  of  water.  The  divine  elements  of  mys 
tery  and  passion  were  forever  hovering  near  them. 
Thus  miners  become,  in  the  course  of  years  of  toil, 
magnificent  examples  of  the  power  of  such  environ 
ment  to  stimulate  the  emotions  and  intellects  of  labour 
ers,  and  to  produce  a  people  with  vast  capacities  for 
love  and  hate,  for  sarcasm  and  laughter,  for  terrible 
wrath  and  for  sublime  self-sacrifice. 

From  the  most  ancient  times,  says  Gamboa,  the 
toils  of  the  mine  have  been  a  punishment  for  slaves, 
a  torment  for  martyrs,  a  means  of  revenge  for  tyrants. 
The  Belgians  purposely  called  the  mining  shaft  "  la 
fosse"  the  grave,  and  the  Cornish  pits  were  named 
"  coffins."  This  dreary  and  exhausting  employment 
makes  men  long  for  amusement;  they  become  reckless 
and  yield  to  the  strong  and  coarse  temptations  of  min 
ing  towns.  The  staples  of  leisure-hour  existence  mean 
to  thousands  deep  drinking  and  high  gaming.  The 
vast  fortunes  made  and  lost  in  mining  stocks,  and  the 
fluctuations  in  real  values  of  the  mines  themselves, 
insensibly  warp  the  judgment  and  make  the  whole 
community  restless,  eager,  ever  anxious  for  sudden 
gains.  A  leading  Comstock  mine  owner  once  said 
that  he  "  did  not  mind  what  wages  he  paid  his  men," 
17 


THE  STOBY  OF  THE  MINE. 

for  "  all  the  surplus  "  came  back  to  him  in  his  stock 
deals. 

The  simple,  childlike  men  of  the  mining  camps 
were  quickly  stirred  for  good  or  evil.  During  the  war 
the  "  sanitary  flour  sack  "  of  Nevada  became  historic. 
It  began  its  career  in  an  outside  camp  where  an  elec 
tion  bet  was  made  that  the  loser  should  carry  a  fifty- 
pound  sack  of  flour  through  the  town  and  donate  it 
to  the  Sanitary  Commission.  Gridley,  to  whom  this 
fate  befel,  put  the  sack  up  at  auction,  and  $4,539  in 
gold  was  realized.  He  then  took  it  and  started,  in  May, 
1864,  on  a  tour  of  the  Pacific  coast.  When  the  famous 
sack  reached  the  Comstock,  Mark  Twain  and  Tom 
Fitch  made  speeches,  and  the  towns  on  the  lode  took 
a  holiday.  Gridley,  covered  with  flags,  the  sack  of  flour 
on  his  shoulder,  walked  through  the  streets,  escorted 
by  brass  bands,  military  companies,  carriages,  horse 
men,  and  the  multitude.  Silver  City  invested  $1,800. 
Gold  Hill  poured  out  $6,587,  and  when  Gridley  reached 
Virginia  City  and  mounted  the  platform  with  his  won 
drous  sack  the  miners  were  determined  to  "  play  the 
game  for  all  it  was  worth."  The  Chollar  miners, 
through  their  spokesman,  offered  $500;  Potosi  miners 
raised  them,  and  so  it  rose  by  hundred-dollar  leaps, 
as  group  after  group  entered  the  contest,  till  the  Gould 
and  Curry  miners,  to  use  their  own  phrase,  "  lifted  the 
rest  of  the  boys  out  of  their  boots  "  by  paying  $3,500 
in  cash.  Coin  rattled  like  hail  on  the  platform  until 
nearly  $14,000  was  raised.  Men  climbed  over  chairs 
and  emptied  their  pockets  before  Gridley.  Accord 
ing  to  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  a  "  small  brown  bug  " 
crawling  on  a  man's  arm  was  caught,  put  up  at  auc 
tion,  and  sold  for  ten  dollars  for  the  Sanitary  Fund, 
as  a  sort  of  side-show,  while  Gridley  was  still  auction 
ing  off  his  flour.  A  person  who  jeered  irreverently 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY. 

at  the  bug,  and  also  suggested  that  the  money  "  had 
better  be  given  straight,"  was  immediately  thrashed 
by  an  irate  miner. 

Nothing  in  the  long  story  of  the  Comstock  sur 
passed  the  outburst  of  delight  that  took  place  upon 
the  surrender  of  Lee.  The  people  "  went  wild  in  a 
frenzy  of  emotion."  Said  one  of  the  newspapers:  "  No 
such  drinking  was  ever  before  seen  anywhere.  In  three 
hours  the  majority  of  the  men  of  the  city  were  crazy 
drunk,  including  many  who  were  never  before  under 
the  influence  of  liquor,  and  were  to  be  seen  lying  in 
heaps.  Business  was  entirely  suspended,  and  the 
printers,  editors,  and  reporters  being  all  drunk,  no 
papers  were  issued."  Mark  Twain  himself  could  not 
invent  a  more  unique,  plausible,  and  all-sufficient  edi 
torial  excuse  for  not  coming  out  on  time.  Eabelais 
in  all  his  madcap  revels  never  depicted  such  "  high 
old  times"  as  Virginia  City  saw  that  day.  Men  left 
the  saloons  and  walked  the  streets,  drinking  the  healths 
of  the  war  heroes  and  of  the  war  President  until  the 
last  reveller  sank  into  maudlin  sleep.  A  few  days  later 
came  the  news  of  the  assassination  of  Lincoln.  Then 
the  men  of  the  Comstock  wept  like  children  and  draped 
their  houses  and  stores  in  black.  Seizing  a  man  who 
muttered  approval  of  the  deed,  they  gave  him  thirty 
lashes  on  the  bare  back,  and  were  with  great  difficulty 
restrained  from  hanging  him. 

Newspapers  were  very  numerous  in  the  Nevada 
mining  camps.  Scores  of  brilliant  and  audacious 
writers  entered  the  new  fields  with  able  publications 
whose  scattered  files  will  always  remain  the  best  con 
temporary  record,  and  often  the  only  one,  of  many  a 
forgotten  district  long  since  abandoned  to  primeval 
silence.  The  support  that  these  journals  received  was 
surprisingly  liberal,  and  while  the  camps  were  pros- 


246  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE!. 

perous  they  were  bonanzas  to  their  fortunate  owners. 
Before  the  Big  Bonanza  was  exhausted  more  than  a 
hundred  different  newspapers  had  been  started  in  the 
scattered  towns  of  Nevada,  whose  population  was  only 
sixty  thousand  people.  "  Along  the  shore  where  these 
dismantled  journals  were  driven  by  adverse  winds/' 
writes  one  of  the  pioneer  editors,  "  are  buried  many 
absurd,  strange,  wonderful,  and  often  tragic  experi 
ences."  A  few,  a  very  few,  of  the  old-time  editors 
survive,  in  a  world  as  remote  from  their  thoughts  and 
training  as  the  thickly  settled,  railroad-gridironed 
Sacramento  Valley  is  remote  from  one  of  the  white- 
haired  trappers  of  Siskiyou.  Some  of  them,  winning 
a  wider  fame,  left  the  Comstock,  or  Reese  River,  or 
White  Pine,  decades  ago;  others,  tired  of  the  "  festive 
pistol's  popping "  and  "  a  man  for  breakfast  every 
morning,"  have  learned  to  plant  orchards  and  vine 
yards  in  the  California  valleys,  and  so  lengthened  their 
days  after  the  long  service  of  pioneer  journalism. 

Hard  and  ceaseless  that  service  was.  Into  every 
new  camp  some  wandering  editor-printer  went  with 
his  press,  types,  and  outfit,  was  noisily  welcomed  by 
the  miners,  turned  his  mule  loose  on  the  hillside,  and 
began  to  pencil  his  announcement  for  the  first  issue 
of  the  Prospect,  Miner,  Argent,  Silver  State,  True  Fis 
sure,  Reveille,  Messenger,  or  whatever  he  chose  to  call 
the  new  venture.  The  Silver  Bend  Reporter,  started 
in  such  a  manner,  in  1867,  at  a  frontier  mining  village 
in  a  rocky  canon  of  Nye  County,  announced  its  advent 
in  language  that  was  there  considered  a  model  of  the 
dignified  style  of  salutatory:  "  Here,  in  this  bright  off 
shoot  of  civilization,  surrounded  by  a  vast  ocean  of 
wilderness,  shall  be  a  newspaper!  In  young,  vigorous, 
and  beautiful  Belmont  we  have  settled."  The  Terri 
torial  Enterprise,  the  pioneer  newspaper  of  the  region, 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  247 

had  five  men  on  the  editorial  staff  and  twenty-two 
compositors.  Five  hundred  dollars  a  month  was  the 
salary  of  the  managing  editor.  Mark  Twain  and  Dan 
De  Quille  were  reporters.  About  this  time  Tom  Fitch, 
of  the  Union,  challenged  Joe  Goodman,  of  the  Enter 
prise,  to  a  duel  in  Six-Mile  Canon.  Mark  Twain  re 
corded  his  disappointment  in  the  next  issue:  "  Young 
Wilson  and  ourselves  at  once  mounted  a  couple  of  fast 
horses  and  followed  in  their  wake  at  the  rate  of  a  mile 
a  minute,  since  when,  being  neither  iron-clad  nor  half- 
soled,  we  enjoy  more  real  comfort  in  standing  up  than 
in  sitting  down.  But  we  lost  our  bloody  item,  for 
Marshall  Perry  arrived  early  with  a  detachment  of 
constables,  and  Deputy-Sheriff  Blodgett  came  with  a 
lot  of  blarsted  sub-sheriffs,  and  these  miserable,  med 
dling  whelps  arrested  the  whole  party  and  marched 
them  back  to  town." 

Columns  of  this  sort  of  thing  could  be  culled  from 
the  pioneer  newspapers  of  the  Comstock  in  the  days 
of  their  glory,  when  their  laughing  and  fighting 
writers  were  the  most  virile,  rollicking,  merciless,  ten 
der-hearted  quill-drivers  in  America.  E.  M.  Daggett, 
Henry  Mighels,  of  Carson,  Myron  Angel,  J.  T.  Good 
man,  and  D.  E.  McCarthy  were  among  the  most  famous 
Nevada  editors  of  the  period,  and  nearly  all  of  them 
belong  to  the  Comstock  group  of  newspapers,  where 
they  first  exhibited  their  high  literary  abilities.  A 
little  later,  while  these  veterans  were  still  in  harness 
and  a  younger  group  of  writers — such  as  Sam  Davis 
and  Arthur  McEwen — were  becoming  known,  the 
press  of  Nevada  contained  more  real  Pacific-coast  lit 
erature  and  gave  its  writers  more  freedom  of  expres 
sion  than  did  the  newspapers  of  California  and  Oregon 
put  together. 

A  pioneer  newspaper  office  early  in  the  ?60's  is  de- 


248  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

scribed  as  a  rickety  one-story  frame  building  about 
twenty  feet  wide.  It  contained  an  old-style  Washing 
ton  press,  cases,  desks,  and  editor's  table.  A  small 
lean-to  addition  was  the  kitchen  and  dining  room,  and 
sleeping-bunks  like  those  in  a  ship's  forecastle  occu 
pied  one  side.  On  cold  winter  nights  the  stove  was  made 
red-hot,  and  the  printers  moved  as  close  to  it  as  possible 
and  "  lashed  old  sacks  around  their  feet  with  bale  rope  " 
to  keep  themselves  warm.  When  it  rained  the  roof 
leaked,  and  the  dripping  water  was  led  over  the  cases 
by  strings,  so  many  of  which  filled  the  upper  part  of  the 
roof  that  it  looked  as  if  hung  with  "  webs  of  Brobding- 
nagian  spiders."  Every  one,  down  to  the  printer's 
devil,  had  shares  in  some  favourite  mine,  and  boxes 
full  of  specimens  lay  around  in  the  corners.  When  a 
prospector  from  the  desert  entered  the  office,  editors 
and  printers  dropped  their  work  and  gathered  around 
him  to  listen  and  ask  questions.  Many  of  these  pioneer 
newspaper  men  had  done  more  or  less  prospecting  them 
selves. 

Stories  about  Mark  Twain,  whose  brother  was  Ter 
ritorial  Secretary,  are  countless  in  Nevada.  He  came 
to  Virginia  City  from  another  camp,  where  he  had 
been  writing  letters  signed  "  Josh."  When  the  first 
steam  press  in  Nevada  started  in  the  Enterprise  office, 
the  "  general  mix-up  of  new  press,  newspaper,  and  bot 
tles  of  wine  "  caused  Twain  to  take  among  other  things 
what  he  averred  was  "  a  severe  cold  on  his  mind."  He 
staid  at  home  and  one  of  his  chums  took  his  place  at 
the  local  desk.  The  next  morning  the  paper  contained 
an  article  purporting  to  come  from  Mark  Twain,  in 
which  he  was  made  to  make  an  abject  and  circumstan 
tial  apology  to  a  large  number  of  Virginia  City  news 
paper  men  and  other  citizens  whom  he  had  at  vari 
ous  times  criticised.  This  document  instantly  cured 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  249 

the  "cold  on  the  mind/'  and  Twain,  resuming  his 
editorial  chair,  described  its  late  incumbent  as  "  a  rep 
tile  endowed  with  no  more  intellect,  no  more  cultiva 
tion,  no  more  Christian  principle  than  animates  and 
adorns  the  sportive  Jackass  rabbit  of  the  Sierras! " 

But  it  was  as  legislative  reporter  that  Clemens  be 
came  a  shining  light  of  the  times.  Besides  his  sober, 
everyday  Senate  and  Assembly  items,  he  concocted  a 
Third  House  report  which  pelted  the  Legislature  with 
incessant  sarcasm.  Member  after  member  was  made  to 
air  his  views  in  a  grandiose  burlesque  of  his  favourite 
expressions.  After  an  excellent  parody  upon  Senator 
Stewart's  famous  speech  against  taxing  the  mines,  the 
president  of  this  mythical  Third  House  responded: 

"  Take  your  seat,  Bill  Stewart!  I  am  not  going  to 
sit  here  and  listen  to  that  same  old  song  over  and  over 
again.  I  have  been  reporting  and  reporting  that  in 
fernal  speech  for  the  last  thirty  days,  and  I  want  you 
to  understand  that  you  can't  play  it  off  any  longer. 
When  I  want  it  I  will  repeat  it  myself — I  know  it  by 
heart,  anyhow.  You  and  your  bed-rock  tunnels  and 
your  blighted  miners'  blasted  hopes  have  got  to  be 
a  sort  of  nightmare  to  me,  and  I  won't  put  up  with  it 
any  longer." 

Thus  the  humorist  dealt  undismayed  with  each 
individual  idiosyncrasy  of  the  legislators,  and  made 
them  ridiculous  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Nevada.  When  poor  Larrowe,  of  Reese  River,  returned 
to  his  constituency  he  was  everywhere  greeted  with  ad 
miring  quotations  from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Third 
House,  such  as  "  Nine  sceptred  and  anointed  quartz 
mills,  sir,  in  Lander  County  already!  "  and  the  terse 
presidential  comment:  "Plant  yourself,  sir!  plant 
yourself!  I  don't  want  any  more  yowling." 

Leaving  the  newspapers,  let  us  again  turn  to  the 


250  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mining  class.  The  statistics  for  1880  are  typical  of  the 
working  force  at  a  time  when  it  was  larger  and  better 
organized  than  at  present.  At  that  time  there  were 
2,770  miners  employed,  of  which  770  were  Americans, 
816  were  Irish,  640  were  English,  191  were  Canadians, 
83  were  Scotch,  and  the  rest  were  "  from  everywhere." 
Welsh,  Swiss,  Swedes,  Slavonians,  Danes,  Belgians, 
French,  Australians,  Manxmen,  Norwegians,  Portu 
guese,  and  Bussians  were  represented.  There  was  one 
Finlander  and  one  Laplander.  Six  more  men  were 
married  than  unmarried.  The  average  age  was  a  frac 
tion  over  thirty-six;  the  average  height  was  five  feet 
nine  and  one  fifth  inches;  the  average  weight  was  very 
close  to  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  pounds.  Classified, 
lastly,  according  to  employment,  in  thirty-nine  distinct 
occupations  in  and  around  the  mines,  the  Americans 
furnished  a  majority  of  the  foremen,  bosses,  engineers, 
firemen,  carpenters,  blacksmiths,  and  machinists.  Both 
the  Irish  and  the  English  furnished  more  miners  in  the 
technical  sense  than  the  Americans  did.  About  eight 
hundred  men  in  all  were  needed  in  the  small  but  im 
portant  occupations,  such  as  masons,  melters,  pump 
men,  brakemen,  lamp  men,  and  a  dozen  others;  nearly 
two  thousand  were  miners  in  the  full  meaning  of  the 
term. 

The  organizations  by  which  the  Comstock  miners 
have  maintained  wages,  have  ruled  in  this  respect  under 
all  administrations,  and  still  continue  to  rule,  are  sim 
ply  "  Unions."  At  Virginia  City,  Gold  Hill,  and  Sil 
ver  City  their  word  long  ago  became  law.  On  one 
occasion  a  superintendent  who  had  attempted  to  cut 
wages  was  concealed  in  the  home  of  a  priest,  or  he 
would  have  been  torn  limb  from  limb  by  the  indignant 
miners.  No  Chinaman  was  allowed  in  the  mines  under 
any  pretext.  As  time  passed  these  remarkable  Unions, 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  251 

which  had  dictated  to  Stewart  and  his  allies  in  the 
days  of  the  earlier  bonanzas,  reached  out  to  greater 
victories.  When  Sharon  and  the  Bank  of  California 
syndicate  began  to  build  a  railroad  to  Virginia  City 
it  was  decided  to  use  Chinese  labour  in  grading. 

Sharon  controlled  nearly  everything,  from  the  news 
papers  to  the  Legislature;  but  no  sooner  were  his  Chi 
nese  graders  established  in  a  camp  near  the  Overman 
mine  than  a  committee  of  three  hundred  and  fifty-nine 
miners  from  the  Union  went  out,  four  abreast,  like 
a  military  company,  in  two  battalions,  and  descended 
on  the  Chinese.  The  sheriff  of  the  county  ordered 
them  to  disperse  and  return  home.  One  man  replied 
that  they  would  do  so  as  soon  as  they  were  through, 
and  advised  the  official  to  sit  down  and  watch  proceed 
ings.  He  halted  them  and  read  the  Eiot  Act,  to  which 
they  listened  with  grave  attention  until  he  had  finished 
that  impressive  document.  Then  they  roared  sealike 
applause,  gave  three  cheers  for  the  "  United  States 
of  America,"  and  marched  on  with  loud  Homeric 
laughter.  As  they  went  along  the  course  of  the  rail 
road  construction  the  Chinese  deserted  pick  and  shovel 
and  fled  into  the  gulches.  Not  a  shot  was  fired.  The 
"  Committee "  returned  to  report  progress,  and  for 
eight  days  not  a  Chinaman  dared  to  do  a  stroke  of  work, 
while  the  lordly  Sharon  was  supplicating  the  Unions 
to  permit  the  resumption  of  railroad  grading.  Finally 
he  signed  an  agreement  by  which  he  removed  the  Chi 
nese  from  the  districts  of  Virginia  City  and  Gold  Hill. 

The  wage  standard  that  the  Unions  insisted  upon 
was  not  less  than  four  dollars  a  day  for  eight  hours 
labour.  All  workers  in  the  mines,  skilled  and  un 
skilled,  were  put  on  the  same  arbitrary  level.  Their 
one  reply  to  every  argument  that  if  cheaper  labourers 
were  employed  in  handling  low-grade  ores5  more  men 


252  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

could  be  given  employment  at  the  higher  rates,  has 
been  the  curt  statement,  "  Pay  four  dollars  a  day  or 
shut  down  the  mines." 

Four  dollars  a  day  was  not  unusual  in  the  mines  of 
the  Pacific  coast  at  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  the 
Comstock.  When  the  cost  of  obtaining  supplies  is  taken 
into  consideration,  four  dollars  left  the  labourer  less 
surplus  than  two  dollars  in  field  work  in  the  accessible 
valleys  of  California,  As  the  Comstock  lode  was  de 
veloped,  only  the  best  miners  were  employed,  and  others 
went  to  newer  districts,  thus  keeping  down  the  supply. 
The  bonanzas  were  discovered  at  such  intervals  as  to 
give  the  best  mines  a  large  margin  of  profit,  even  when 
paying  such  wages,  and  the  stockholders,  always  anx 
ious  for  immediate  returns,  were  never  willing  to  shut 
down  the  mines  long  enough  to  secure  a  new  body  of 
working  men,  even  if  they  could  thus  break  up  the 
Unions  and  greatly  reduce  the  running  expenses  of 
the  mines.  Indeed,  there  never  was  any  united  effort 
to  reduce  wages,  so  violent  and  immediate  was  the  re 
volt  against  the  slightest  move  in  that  direction,  so 
strongly  were  the  Unions  supported  by  the  whole  com 
munity.  Besides,  in  many  if  not  all  cases  the  tem 
porary  closing  of  a  mine  meant  the  flooding  of  it  with 
water,  and  perhaps  years  of  costly  efforts  to  pump  it 
dry  again.  The  Unions  held  an  impregnable  fortress. 

If  there  had  been  no  stock  market,  and  if  careful 
business  men  had  been  owners  of  the  mines  and  had 
held  their  shares  as  an  investment  first,  last,  and  al 
ways,  no  miners'  Union  or  mining  community  could 
have  prevented  readjustment  of  the  amount  and  the 
distribution  of  the  wage  fund.  The  Comstock  plan, 
which  paid  the  poorest  and  the  best  miners  by  the  same 
scale  of  compensation,  would  have  given  place  to  a 
sliding  scale  fixed  by  the  employers  according  to  their 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  253 

ideas  of  the  labour  market.  The  artificial  standards 
of  the  Union  were  only  made  possible  by  the  unique 
financial  history  of  the  great  lode;  by  the  millions  of 
dollars  in  unproductive  assessments  collected  from 
eager  men  and  women  of  every  rank  in  life  through 
out  the  Pacific-coast  States  and  Territories;  by  the 
splendid  succession  of  bonanzas  which  created  in  turn 
the  fictitious  paper  bonanzas  of  the  stock  markets; 
and,  lastly,  by  the  great  money  kings,  Stewart,  Jones, 
Sharon,  Ralston,  Hayward,  and  the  Bonanza  Four. 

Every  observer  of  the  Comstock  in  its  palmy  days 
noted  the  universally  high  standards  of  living.  Not 
only  the  necessaries,  but  the  luxuries  of  life  formed 
the  daily  fare  of  the  miners.  California  and  the  ad 
jacent  valleys  sent  the  choicest  fruits,  berries,  vege 
tables,  milk,  fresh  butter,  and  stall-fed  beef.  Trout, 
venison,  bear,  squirrels,  quail,  and  grouse  from  the 
Sierras,  salmon  from  the  Sacramento,  ducks,  geese, 
snipe,  and  other  wild  fowl  from  the  sloughs  and  bays, 
and  oysters  from  the  Chesapeake,  were  everyday  affairs 
in  the  Virginia  City  markets.  In  1876  the  railroad 
carried  to  the  two  towns  in  round  numbers  400,000 
pounds  of  fish,  350,000  pounds  of  poultry,  120,000 
pounds  of  oysters,  1,020,000  pounds  of  eggs,  1,000,000 
pounds  of  vegetables,  and  over  2,700,000  pounds  of 
fresh  fruit.  Hams  of  the  best  grade  to  be  obtained 
were  a  favourite  article  of  food,  and  nearly  600,000 
pounds  were  used.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  continue 
the  list.  No  labourers  ever  lived  on  better  fare. 

The  clothing  worn  by  the  miners  at  home  and  in 
the  streets  was  substantial  and  often  elegant.  Their 
underwear,  white  shirts,  and  shoes  were  of  the  grade 
preferred  by  the  average  storekeeper  or  landowner. 
The  unmarried  miners  lived  in  large,  well-kept  lodging 
houses,  the  rooms  of  which  were  carpeted,  heated, 


254:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

and  comfortable.  Bathrooms  were  universal,  not  only 
in  the  lodging  houses  but  at  the  hoisting  buildings. 
Board  and  lodging  which  cost  forty  or  forty-five  dollars 
per  month  in  bonanza  times  has  been  reduced  by  1880 
to  thirty  dollars,  and  even  less. 

Pay  day  on  the  Comstock  comes  weekly  in  some 
classes  of  work,  and  the  habit  of  squaring  accounts  on 
Monday  has  grown  up  among  merchants,  so  that  Mon 
day  is  still  called  "  steamer  day,"  a  phrase  borrowed 
from  pioneer  San  Francisco.  The  regular  pay  day  of 
the  working  miners  is  usually  from  the  first  to  the 
third  of  every  month.  The  men,  as  they  come  up  out 
of  the  mine,  go  to  the  timekeeper's  office  and  get  their 
accounts.  Then  they  go  to  another  office,  where  the 
cashier  or  head  clerk  pays  them.  In  the  best  Comstock 
times  Consolidated  Virginia's  monthly  pay  roll  was 
ninety  thousand  dollars,  and  three  quarters  of  a  million 
dollars  was  paid  along  the  Comstock  every  month  to 
the  employees  of  the  mines.  Four  dollars  a  day  for 
workmen  counts  up  fast,  and,  besides,  the  engineers, 
machinists,  and  a  few  others  received  five,  six,  and  even 
seven  dollars  a  day.  The  railroad  men,  the  mill  men 
along  the  Carson  Eiver,  and  the  lumberers  in  the  moun 
tains  all  receive  their  wages  in  much  the  same  way  as 
the  miners  do,  and  the  cities  on  the  lode  receive  the 
most  of  it  back  again.  In  many  cases  every  man  in  a 
mine  leaves  a  dollar  or  two  with  the  cashier,  when  he 
draws  his  pay,  for  the  family  of  some  dead  comrade; 
in  this  way  as  much  as  two  thousand  dollars  is  some 
times  raised  in  five  or  six  months.  This  is  the  miners' 
life-insurance  system. 

Chosen  as  the  miners  are — the  very  pick  of  the 
mining  population  of  the  Pacific  slope — they  are  young 
and  vigorous,  but,  as  vital  statistics  show,  they  suffer 
from  pulmonary  troubles.  This  is  due  to  the  sudden 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  255 

change  from  the  tropic  lower  levels  of  the  mine  to  the 
snow-covered,  windy  ridge  of  the  town  in  winter. 
"  Many  a  man,"  says  Mr.  Lord,  "  reached  his  house 
half-choked  with  pneumonia,  and  spitting  blood." 
The  introduction  of  warm  dressing-  and  waiting-rooms 
at  the  hoisting  works  lessened  disease,  though  the  vitali 
ty  of  the  miners  continued  to  be  sapped  by  their  exces 
sive  use  of  stimulants.  Long  after  the  big  bonanza  days 
the  average  annual  consumption  of  beer  on  the  Corn- 
stock  was  fifteen  gallons  apiece  for  every  resident  of 
the  county,  and  that  of  spirituous  liquors  was  five  gal 
lons.  The  twenty  thousand  people  spent  annually 
about  nine  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  beer,  wine, 
and  ardent  drinks.  This  was  called  by  the  saloon  men 
"  a  dry  season,"  however,  for  they  had  seen  the  average 
annual  consumption  of  all  classes  of  liquors  nearly 
three  times  as  much. 

The  remarkable  efficiency  of  the  well-fed,  well- 
clothed,  and  contented  miners  of  the  Comstock  has 
been  noted  in  previous  chapters.  There  are  no  better 
miners  known  to  the  craft,  nor  can  any  nationality 
be  said  to  excel.  Working  groups  are  usually  made 
up  of  men  of  several  nations,  for  they  accomplish  more 
in  this  manner.  In  1877,  in  the  California  mine,  217,- 
432  tons  of  ore  were  extracted  and  milled.  This,  it 
has  been  estimated,  was  a  daily  average  of  1.13  ton 
for  each  man  employed.  The  report  of  the  company 
gave  the  expenses  of  that  year  as  follows:  Hoisting 
ore,  $186,461;  supplies,  $357,101;  salaries  and  wages, 
$788,012— giving  a  total  of  $1,331,574.  The  217,432 
tons  of  ore  brought  up  was  lifted  1,600  feet  and  cost 
at  the  surface  $6.12  per  ton.  Mining  authorities  say 
that  this  entire  record  is  without  parallel  for  cheapness 
and  efficiency  under  the  given  conditions. 

Never  were  the  self-reliance  and  sheer  fighting 


256  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

capacity  of  the  men  of  the  Comstock  "better  shown 
than  during  and  just  after  the  great  fire  of  October, 
1875.  It  began  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  in  a  low 
lodging  house  kept  by  a  woman  called  "  Crazy  Kate." 
Scores  of  cheap  frame  buildings  surrounded  it,  every 
thing  was  like  tinder,  and  a  fierce  gale  was  blowing. 
People  roused  from  sleep  had  barely  time  to  escape 
with  their  lives.  The  hoisting  works  lifted  men  out 
of  the  depths  as  fast  as  possible,  and  miners  and  fire 
men  fought  the  flames.  Vain  task!  The  wind  hurled 
fiery  missiles  across  the  city,  kindling  fresh  centres 
of  destruction,  while  the  main  torrent  rolled  on  like  a 
lava  river  from  Kilauea,  hemming  in  the  defeated 
toilers.  Great  brick  buildings  tumbled,  as  in  the  Bos 
ton  and  Chicago  fires.  The  populace,  yielding  to 
despair,  fled  to  the  mountains  and  there  looked  down 
from  barren  rocks  upon  the  destruction  of  Virginia 
City.  Out  of  the  ocean  of  fire  came  the  roar  of  ex 
plosives  as  whole  masses  of  buildings  were  blown  to 
pieces  by  gunpowder  and  dynamite  stored  within,  or 
were  blasted  out  of  the  way  by  the  heroic  men,  still 
fighting  as  they  retreated.  Pillars  of  flame  and  the 
mass  of  dark  smoke  were  seen  fifteen  miles  away.  The 
business  houses,  public  buildings,  hotels,  banks, 
churches,  freight  and  passenger  depots,  and  many  pri 
vate  residences  were  in  flames  when  the  whole  fighting 
force  was  centred  on  the  costly  mine  works.  The 
mountains  shook  with  blasts  of  dynamite,  clearing 
open  spaces  about  mills  and  hoisting  works,  but  the  fire 
leaped  over  in  a  hundred  places  at  once,  caught  lumber 
yards  and  shaft  houses,  and  swept  nearly  all  the  sur 
face  works  of  the  mines  out  of  existence  in  a  few 
moments.  Millions  of  feet  of  lumber,  thousands  of 
cords  of  wood,  trestles,  offices,  roofs,  machinery,  in 
flammable  supplies  of  every  description,  threw  out  such 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  257 

heat  that  a  pile  of  railroad  car-wheels  in  the  open  air 
in  the  Ophir  yards  were  smelted  together.  The  fire 
began  to  creep  down  the  great  shafts,  and  here  the 
miners  and  firemen  struggled  in  the  midst  of  blazing 
ruins  until  the  mines  themselves  and  the  joint  shaft 
buildings  of  California  and  Consolidated  Virginia  were 
saved. 

About  two  thousand  buildings  were  destroyed  on 
the  lode,  and  ten  million  dollars  would  hardly  have 
replaced  the  loss.  Car  loads  of  cooked  provisions, 
blankets,  and  other  supplies  were  started  toward  the 
Comstock  while  the  fire  was  still  burning.  Money  was 
telegraphed.  Eelief  committees  were  organized  in 
other  towns  and  cities.  Lumber  was  placed  on  the 
smoking  earth,  still  being  wet  by  firemen.  Electric 
lights  enabled  the  work  of  rebuilding  to  go  on  by  night 
as  well  as  by  day.  In  sixty  days  the  people  of  Vir 
ginia  City  were  again  settled  comfortably.  An  extract 
from  the  official  report  made  by  the  superintendent 
of  Ophir  will  serve  to  show  the  stuff  that  men  were 
made  of  in  old  Comstock  days:  "  On  the  day  after  the 
fire  men  were  sent  to  Carson  and  Dutch  Flat,  Cali 
fornia,  to  procure  and  ship  timbers;  machinery  was 
telegraphed  for.  The  new  double-reel  hoisting  en 
gine  just  completed  for  the  combination  shaft  of  the 
Chollar-Potosi,  Hale  and  Norcross,  and  Savage  was 
secured;  the  old  engine  foundations  were  torn  out 
and  new  ones  constructed;  work  was  prosecuted  with 
out  cessation;  supplies  hauled  a  considerable  distance 
on  account  of  the  destruction  of  the  railroad  tunnel 
and  bridges;  the  works  rebuilt  and  hoisting  through 
the  shaft  resumed  November  25th,  being  inside  of 
thirty  days  from  the  time  of  destruction."  The  new 
buildings  cost  nearly  $318,000.  Consolidated  Virginia 
and  California,  which  had  lost  $1,461,000  by  the  fire, 


258  ME  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

replaced  everything  that  was  destroyed  within  fifty 
days,  and  yet  declared  without  delay  their  regular  divi 
dends.  Consolidated  Virginia  paid  out  over  two  mil 
lion  dollars  while  rebuilding  its  works,  for  it  was  in 
bonanza.  These  were  extraordinary  and  indeed  unpre 
cedented  feats  of  labour  and  capital.  The  city  of  mines 
had  come  out  gloriously  under  the  fire  test. 

Such  were  the  workmen,  such  the  communities,  that 
once  clustered  in  the  rocky  waste  on  the  mountains 
of  Nevada.  They  are  still  the  same,  though  since  the 
Big  Bonanza  was  worked  out  the  mines  have  paid 
their  owners  poorly,  and  the  towns  have  suffered  much 
more  than  in  any  former  period  of  borrasca.  Small 
stockholders  no  longer  carry  the  burden  of  assessments 
as  formerly,  but  a  few  large  owners  have  been  forced 
to  prop  up  the  fallen  market  and  sustain  by  their  own 
wealth  the  daring  and  still  alluring  speculation.  None 
except  themselves  can  say  how  many  more  millions 
of  dollars  these  men  will  or  can  spend  in  the  search. 
What  new  problems  are  to  be  solved  in  deeps  below 
deeps,  what  magnificent  metalliferous  deposits  may 
rest  undiscovered  in  the  great  fissure,  no  human 
prophecy  can  foretell. 


CHAPTEK  XXI. 

THE   COMSTOCK   AS   IT   IS. 

THUS  far,  the  story  has  been  a  straightforward 
narrative  of  events,  from  the  days  of  the  trappers  to 
the  exhaustion  of  the  Big  Bonanza.  Those  Titans 
whose  plots  and  counterplots  shook  half  a  continent 
are  dead,  or  have  forever  left  the  Comstock.  We  have 
fallen  upon  dark  and  narrow  times,  and  yet,  like  a  ship 
long  beating  up  some  iron  coast  against  unfriendly 
winds,  each  headland  we  round  may  prove  to  be  the 
last  cape  that  shuts  us  out  from  another  prosperous 
voyage.  The  spirit  of  the  true  mining  men  was  never 
so  clearly  present  as  it  has  been  through  the  lesser  epi 
sodes  of  these  sixteen  weary  years  of  the  Silence  of 
the  Comstock. 

"  She  has  another  word  to  say.  She  is  asleep,  but 
not  dead."  Thus  spoke  incarnate  poetry  to  me  from 
the  lips  of  one  of  the  ancients  as  I  stood  on  a  gray 
waste  pile,  looking  out  over  the  barren  land.  The 
story  ends  with  a  question — "  What  next  ?  "  Is  it  to 
become  a  land  without  a  habitation,  a  mountain  of 
ruins  like  the  ancient  city  forts  of  those  unrecorded 
miners  of  Mashonaland  and  the  Golden  Chersonese? 

If  thus  it  was  now  ended,  how  very  far  from  a  new 
story  it  is  when  all  is  told.  Nothing  among  the  deeds 
of  gold-hungry  men  and  wandering  races  of  conquerors 
could  be  less  strange  than  this,  and  yet  it  covers  so 
large  a  space  as  to  become  almost  an  epic.  Over  and 
18  259 


260  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

over  again,  great  busy  camps,  becoming  strangely 
silent,  have  perished  as  frosted  leaves.  The  cities  the 
miner  has  built — who  shall  name  or  number  them? 
They  are  hidden  in  trackless  deserts,  luring  genera 
tions  of  prospectors  to  their  deaths;  they  lie  among 
Andes  and  Himalayas,  under  glaciers,  in  tangled  Cam 
bodian  forests,  or,  deeper  still,  where  lost  continents 
are  sunk  in  ocean's  dreamless  ooze.  Not  yet  has  that 
hour  of  doom  and  oblivion  arrived  for  the  proud  Corn- 
stock,  but  the  sceptre  has  already  passed  to  younger 
camps. 

Visit  with  me  the  Comstock,  then,  in  this  year  of 
grace  1896  and  let  us  briefly  note  the  condition  of  af 
fairs.  We  climb  with  the  railroad  from  well-watered 
Carson's  sea-green  circle,  through  wild  gorges  and 
along  the  crest  of  ridges  that  look  down  upon  thou 
sands  of  prospect  holes.  Every  moment  the  view 
broadens  and  brightens.  We  climb  through  a  barren, 
lonely,  forsaken  land  of  strange,  shining  grays  and 
browns,  clear  cut  ir  a  marvellously  invigorating  moun 
tain  atmosphere.  The  desert  slopes  endlessly  away 
from  the  eternal  mountains,  and  a  soft,  golden  glow, 
like  that  which  pervades  one  of  Gerome's  Egyptian 
paintings  lingers  in  the  far  east,  across  the  yellow  sands, 
the  silver  sage  brush.  High  peaks,  treeless  even  to 
their  deepest  canons,  cold,  severe,  and  yet  so  wonder 
fully  chiselled  and  rounded  that  the  heart  leaps  to  be 
hold  them,  are  ranged  about  the  amphitheatre  wherein 
the  cities  of  the  Comstock  were  founded  thirty-seven 
years  ago.  All  is  revealed  in  successive  landscapes, 
as  the  railroad  carries  one  upward  from  the  valley 
floor  of  the  Carson — itself  a  high  plateau — toward 
these  cities  in  the  clouds,  still  strong  and  patient,  still 
able  to  endure  until  the  end. 

A  little  space  farther  and  higher,  and  the  train 


THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS.  261 

swings  along  the  side  of  that  old-time  Slippery  Gulch, 
down  which  the  pioneers  slid  on  rainy  mornings,  as 
they  climbed  painfully,  with  more  or  less  reprehensible 
language,  to  their  new-found  placers  on  Gold  Hill. 
There,  in  the  hollow  and  canon-crossed  head  of  the 
gulch,  and  on  its  precipitous  sides,  so  steep  that  as  one 
explores  the  outlying  streets  his  hand  almost  touches 
the  rise  of  the  hill,  the  city  of  Gold  Hill  abides,  and 
all  the  world-famous  South  End  mines  of  the  Comstock 
honeycomb  the  vein  beneath  it. 

Although  Gold  Hill  played  a  minor  part  in  the 
great  trilogy  of  the  Comstock,  it  shows,  even  more  than 
Virginia  City,  that  most  striking  feature  of  the  true 
Western  mining  camp,  the  adoption  of  the  natural  sur 
face  of  the  earth,  no  matter  how  steep,  rocky,  or  diffi 
cult  of  access,  as  good  enough  to  build  upon.  A  little 
levelling  may  have  been  necessary  to  keep  streets  and 
buildings  from  rolling  to  the  bottom  of  the  gulches, 
but  as  soon  as  the  stern  requirements  of  the  law  of 
gravity  were  to  some  extent  satisfied  the  pioneers 
ceased  the  struggle.  Every  inch  of  ground  that  a  house 
can  be  made  to  cling  to  is  occupied,  and  the  roof  of 
one  line  of  dwellings  is  often  on  a  level  with  the  base 
ments  of  the  next  higher  row.  So  strenuously  have 
men  seized  upon  and  utilized  every  point  of  vantage 
that  the  houses  seem  piled  on  top  of  one  another  in 
the  centre  of  the  town,  while  outside  scattered  dwell 
ings  climb  the  ridges  like  human  beings,  leaning  for 
ward  against  the  slope  and  resting  in  groups.  One 
sees  in  such  an  old  mining  camp  so  much  that  seems 
to  subvert  the  ordinary  laws  of  architectural  stability, 
so  many  leaning  towers  and  walls,  that  he  is  fain  to 
believe  that  the  whole  mass  of  the  town  is  in  reality 
bolted  and  iron-plated  together  and  fastened  to  the 
mountain  slopes.  In  the  deep  horseshoe-shaped 


262  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

quarry  pit  a  mile  across  that  by  some  curious  mis 
nomer  was  called  Gold  Hill,  neighbour  can  talk  to  neigh 
bour  almost  as  in  a  theatre,  so  wonderfully  do  whole 
streets  and  blocks  of  buildings  overhang  those  beneath 
them. 

This  Gold  Hill,  this  irregular  and  immense  mass  of 
overcrowded  structures,  some  of  rough-hewn  black 
timbers,  some  costly  and  pretentious,  but  all  mingling 
with  and  actually  jostling  the  shanties;  these  sheds, 
barns,  and  rude  cheap  cottages;  these  bits  of  fence 
and  sidewalk;  these  crumbling  steps  leading  from 
street  to  street  and  from  house  to  house,  fitter  for  goats 
than  for  human  beings;  these  black  chimneys,  piles  of 
rusting  machinery,  high-roofed  mills,  and  acres  of 
white  and  brown  dump  heaps  encroaching  on  the  town 
or  sloping  away  into  gulches — all  give  one  a  vivid 
impression  of  what  life  was  in  the  days  when 
the  place  was  crowded  to  the  brim.  In  those  days 
it  was  not  a  city  in  fact,  nor  yet  a  town;  it  was  simply 
one  great  communal  dwelling  or  primitive  apartment 
house.  It  still  has  a  communal  aspect,  for  the  lessen 
ing  population  retires  year  by  year  from  the  outskirts, 
leaving  shanty  after  shanty  to  rot  there,  and  occupies 
the  better  buildings. 

The  railroad  carries  us  through  the  Divide  a  few 
hundred  yards,  and  the  last  and  greatest  panorama  of 
the  Comstock  chain  instantly  sweeps  into  view.  Sugar 
Loaf  and  the  Flowery  Eange  are  fully  revealed,  the 
North  End  mines  and  the  historic  metropolis  of  the 
silver  miners  lie  spread  out  on  an  irregular  sloping 
mound  broken  by  ravines  and  hollows,  rising  to  the 
mountains  of  granite  on  the  west,  and  sinking  into 
vast  canons  east.  It  is  larger  than  Gold  Hill,  and  slow 
ly  becomes  more  impressive,  though  not  so  immedi 
ately  picturesque.  It  lies  marvellously  open  to  all  the 


THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS.  263 

winds  that  blow,  and  they  seem  to  gather  here  from  the 
western  half  of  the  continent.  The  city  is  a  forest  of 
chimney  pots  of  all  shapes  and  sizes  and  every  con 
ceivable  manner  of  patent,  aimed  at  circumventing 
winds  of  every  sort,  even  perpendicular  ones.  Here 
ends,  almost  in  the  heart  of  the  town,  this  mountain 
railroad  flung  out  into  a  wilderness  of  rocks  for  the  sake 
of  the  silver  mines,  just  as  in  California  a  broad,  superb 
stage  road  is  flung  twenty-six  miles  out  into  the  Coast 
Eange  to  carry  passengers  to  the  Lick  Observatory,  on 
the  top  of  Mount  Hamilton. 

What  is  the  visitor's  first  impression,  supposing  that 
he  knows  the  past  of  the  Comstock?  Not  disappoint 
ment,  but  a  poignant  regret,  almost  strong  enough  to 
be  called  a  personal  sorrow.  Wreck,  decay,  abandon 
ment,  make  the  dominant  note  of  the  scene.  Many  of 
the  great  mills  stand  idle  over  their  vast  gray  waste 
heaps,  rotting  slowly  down  to  death  and  chaos.  In 
side,  the  stamps  hang  rusting  in  long  rows,  "  hung 
up,"  as  the  miners  say.  No  clang  and  clatter  is  heard 
— no  strong,  deep  roar  of  the  massive  machinery 
that  filled  the  canons  and  the  crowded  streets  in 
bonanza  times  with  constant  undercurrents  of  thrill 
ing,  pulsing  sound  night  and  day  alike  while  mil 
lions  of  dollars'  worth  of  bullion  poured  out  of  the 
smelters. 

The  catastrophe — for  it  is  nothing  less — does  not 
seem  to  attract  any  one's  serious  attention,  hardly  be 
comes  formulated  into  a  casual  phrase.  One  is  told 
elsewhere  that  "  times  are  dull  on  the  Comstock,"  that 
Virginia  City  "  is  not  what  it  used  to  be."  One  hears 
on  the  Comstock  itself  that  "  after  a  little  things  will 
pick  up  "  ;  that  there  is  plenty  of  good  rock  down  in 
the  mines;  that  the  trouble  is  with  "  the  ring  " — the 
speculators  who  are  trying  to  control  something  or 


264:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

other;  that  pretty  soon  the  lower  levels  will  be  pumped 
out,  and  work  resumed  in  that  most  torrid  mining  belt 
known  to  modern  science;  that  matters  are  nearly 
ready  for  a  great  simultaneous  revival  of  enthusiasm. 
Nor  is  this  merely  the  despairing  cry  of  unacknowl 
edged  defeat;  it  is  something  almost  too  sacred  to  be 
put  into  words.  It  is  neither  more  nor  less,  in  its  higher 
manifestations,  than  the  sublime  spirit  of  patriotism, 
defending  to  the  last  the  lonely  mountain  fortress  of 
the  miner  State  of  the  Comstock.  These  men  and 
women  who  built  Gold  Hill  and  Virginia  are  uncon 
sciously  loyal  to  something  that  never  took  visible  form 
in  the  chain  of  American  institutional  development. 
The  township,  county,  and  political  state  have  not  be 
come  as  living  realities  to  them  as  the  laws,  customs, 
and  social  order  of  the  Comstock.  The  cheerfulness 
and  even  buoyancy,  therefore,  with  which  the  com 
munity  as  a  whole  maintains  itself  is  something  that 
passes  human  understanding. 

I  stood  and  watched  a  man  at  the  ore  heap  in  a 
mill.  He  was  a  very  strong,  tall  man,  blond-bearded, 
with  flakes  of  gray  in  his  hair;  a  kindly,  sweet-tem 
pered  mountaineer,  and  he  knew  the  mill  and  mines 
as  a  child  knows  the  rooms  of  the  house  in  which  he 
lives.  "  Our  mine  is  doing  a  little  better,"  he  said  with 
a  smile  of  pleasure.  "  They  think  up  at  Ophir  that 
they'll  strike  it  rich  before  any  one  else,  but  maybe 
they're  mistaken  about  that." 

Everywhere  the  same  esprit  du  corps  exists;  it  goes 
far  to  explain  the  victories  of  the  Comstock.  Every 
where,  in  spite  of  the  real  decay  and  wasting  plant  of 
many  enterprises,  things  are  kept  in  some  degree  pre 
pared  for  the  expected  revival  of  mining  interests.  In 
outward  appearances,  the  community  has  fallen  upon 
hopelessly  hard  times;  but  the  potential  capacity  of 


THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS.  265 

mines  and  mills  is  still  enormous,  and  if  large  bodies 
of  pay  ore  were  uncovered  the  really  important  proper 
ties  would  almost  instantly  resume  work  at  full  speed. 
After  twenty  years  of  borrasca,  an  air  of  constant  readi 
ness  still  pervades  every  department.  The  boys  that 
sharpen  drills,  the  bosses  and  surveyors  and  superin 
tendents,  all  dwell  in  this  hopeful  atmosphere  and  knit 
themselves  closer  and  closer  to  the  thoughts  of  the 
unknown  mine  depths. 

Even  while  this  chapter  was  being  written  these 
unconquerable  Comstockers  made  a  discovery  that  may 
prove  a  new  bonanza.  In  previous  chapters  the  forma 
tion  of  the  chain  of  mines  has  been  described.  In  the 
chapter  on  Sutro  Tunnel  it  was  explained  that  many 
ledges  were  cut  by  that  great  adit,  and  that  some  of 
these  ledges  might  prove  valuable.  As  it  happens, 
there  is  a  wide  ledge  of  rock,  rich  in  a  few  places  on 
the  surface,  that  lies  east  of  and  parallel  to  the  Corn- 
stock,  the  centre  ridges  of  both  lodes  being  perhaps 
a  mile  apart,  and  the  lodes  possibly  uniting  somewhere 
in  the  depths.  The  long-neglected  ledge,  the  Bruns 
wick,  will  now  be  thoroughly  explored  from  end  to 
end — a  work  of  many  months.  Ore  now  taken  out  of  a 
three-foot  vein  in  the  extension  of  Chollar  and  in  Hale 
and  Norcross  territory  is  very  rich,  and  much  resembles 
Comstock  ore.  Being  drained  at  a  depth  of  1,600  feet 
by  the  Sutro  Tunnel,  water  can  be  handled  cheaply 
should  bonanzas  exist  in  the  Brunswick,  and  it  is  pos 
sible  that  in  a  few  years  a  fourth  line  of  deep-mine 
works  will  be  built  far  east,  beyond  the  long-neglected 
third  line  of  shafts. 

The  future  is  a  "  sealed  seed  plot/'  and  no  one 
knows  what  has  been  sown  therein  for  these  great 
hearted  Comstock  miners.  But  how  dramatic  a  pos 
sibility  it  is,  that  while  all  the  world  is  being  stirred  by 


266  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

the  extraordinary  mining  events  of  recent  months,  not 
only  in  America,  but  in  nearly  every  other  country 
under  the  sun,  the  ancient  strength  of  the  Comstock 
is  perhaps  about  to  return! 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF   TO-DAT. 

THE  American  miner  of  to-day  is  toiling  steadily 
on,  in  his  countless  camps,  making  history  more  rapidly 
than  ever  before.  The  yield  of  our  mines  fluctuates 
to  some  extent,  but  every  decade  shows  enormous  gains. 
According  to  official  statistics,  the  total  value  of  the 
mineral  products  of  the  United  States  in  the  two  years 
1893  and  1894,  the  last  period  for  which  we  have  au 
thoritative  data,  was,  in  round  numbers,  $1,169,000,000. 
This  includes  the  metals,  iron  leading  in  value,  with 
silver,  gold,  copper,  lead,  and  zinc  following  in  the 
order  named;  it  also  includes  fuels,  structural  ma 
terials,  abrasive  materials,  minerals  used  for  chemical 
purposes,  mineral  pigments,  and  many  miscellaneous 
products  of  our  mines. 

The  vast  growth  of  all  departments  of  American 
mining  industry  can  be  plainly  illustrated  by  a  few 
statistics.  In  1845  the  entire  United  States  produced 
but  100  tons  of  copper;  in  1890  a  single  mine,  the 
Calumet  and  Hecla  of  Michigan,  produced  26,727 
tons;  in  1894  the  total  product  of  the  United  States 
was  158,120  tons.  The  world-famous  Calumet  and 
Hecla  has  produced  over  500,000  tons  of  copper  since 
its  discovery  and  has  paid  nearly  $45,000,000  in  divi 
dends.  In  1825  the  lead  product  of  the  United  States 
was  but  1,500  tons;  the  notable  Illinois  and  Missouri 
deposits  brought  this  up  to  30,000  tons  in  1845,  but 
the  annual  yield  sank  to  20,000  tons,  and  far  below, 

267 


268  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

until  Eureka,  Leadville,  Coeur  d'Alene,  and  other 
great  groups  of  mines  carried  it  to  the  maximum  of 
1893— some  230,000  tons.  Similar  illustrations  might 
be  given  in  every  other  department  of  mining.  As 
far  as  civilization  is  concerned,  the  iron  industry  is 
the  most  suggestive  of  all.  According  to  Mr.  Birken- 
bine's  monograph  on  Production  of  Iron  Ores  (United 
States  Keports),  the  approximate  total  iron  product 
of  the  world  is  57,000,000  tons,  of  which  the  United 
States,  ranking  by  far  the  first,  produces  16,300,000 
tons. 

Such  impressive  sum  totals  may  serve  to  illustrate 
the  greatness  of  these  rapidly  developing  underground 
industries.  Better,  however,  are  glimpses  of  a  few  of 
the  newer  American  mine  groups  which  are  making 
fortunes  for  men,  especially  from  the  precious  metals. 
The  Cripple  Creek  district  is  situated  upon  some 
rounded  hills  from  seven  to  twelve  miles  southwest 
of  Pike's  Peak,  Colorado,  at  an  elevation  of  from  9,000 
to  10,800  feet.  Some  early  prospectors  organized 
Mount  Pisgah  district  here  in  1874,  but  failed  to 
handle  the  ores  at  a  profit.  An  excitement  occurred 
in  1884,  when  5,000  people  camped  here  on  "  salted  " 
claims.  Some  of  these  claims  afterward  proved  to  be 
valuable,  though  sold  on  false  pretenses.  Along  in  1890 
numbers  of  tenderf eet,  or  "  alfalfa  miners,"  as  the  pros 
pectors  called  them,  began  to  take  up  claims  in  the 
twice-abandoned  camps.  After  a  while,  by  a  little 
stream  in  the  aspen  thickets,  a  lame  burro,  a  dog  with 
a  broken  leg,  and  a  man  with  a  broken  arm  are  said  to 
have  given  the  chief  camp  its  name.  Notable  discov 
eries  were  soon  made,  changing  penniless  men  into 
millionaires,  and  by  1894  the  Cripple  Creek  excitement 
was  something  wonderful  to  see. 

Cripple  Creek  mining  towns  have  continued  to 


THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY.        269 

grow  since  then;  ten  or  twelve  camps,  with  a  total 
population  of  some  25,000,  lie  within  an  area  of  six 
teen  square  miles.  Something  like  a  hundred  mines 
are  shipping  ore  to  the  cyanide-process  mills  at  Flor 
ence,  on  the  Arkansas.  The  mines  in  1892  yielded 
$600,000;  in  1893,  $2,100,000;  in  1894,  $3,000,000; 
and  in  1895,  nearly  $8,000,000.  This  one  district  has 
made  Colorado  the  leading  gold-producing  State  in 
the  Union,  the  total  output  of  gold  in  1895  being  $17,- 
340,495. 

Another  district  attracting  attention  is  the  Mercur 
of  Utah,  in  the  Oquirrh  Mountains,  where  a  Govern 
ment  mule,  kicking  a  piece  of  rock,  revealed  the  gleam 
of  gold  to  a  lucky  teamster  named  Allen.  Here,  and  in 
the  adjacent  Tintic  range,  are  rapidly  growing  camps, 
producing  half  the  precious  metals  of  Utah. 

But  perhaps  no  portion  of  the  great  mineral  belts  of 
America  is  being  more  rapidly  developed  at  present 
than  California,  long  to  some  extent  neglected,  and 
yet  possessing  many  very  famous  mines  and  enormous 
undeveloped  resources.  The  noted  Idaho  and  Eureka 
ore  body  yielded  over  $11,000,000  in  seventeen  years, 
and  paid  over  $5,000,000  in  dividends.  The  Hayward, 
the  Keystone,  and  the  Oneida  of  Amador;  the  Massa 
chusetts  and  the  Gold  Hill  of  Nevada;  the  Sierra 
Buttes;  the  Plumas  Eureka  and  the  Standard  Consoli 
dated,  are  equally  familiar  names  to  California  gold 
miners.  About  eighteen  thousand  miners  are  regularly 
employed  in  twenty-four  hundred  well-established 
mines,  in  different  parts  of  the  State.  The  Pacific  coast 
north  of  Mexico,  and  including  Nevada  and  Arizona, 
has  fully  a  thousand  stamp  mills,  carrying  about  fifteen 
thousand  stamps  and  costing,  with  other  machinery, 
fully  $20,000,000.  Half  of  this  investment  is  in  the 
State  of  California. 


270  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

The  American  prospector,  cheerful  and  energetic 
as  ever,  is  at  work  in  hundreds  and  thousands  of  once- 
abandoned  camps,  whose  ledges  could  not  be  profit 
ably  worked  by  old  methods.  He  is  busy  revealing  new 
treasures  in  the  islands  of  Unga  and  Unalaska,  in  camps 
along  the  Yukon,  in  the  south-coast  Alaskan  gold 
fields,  and  in  British  Columbian  districts,  such  as  Cas- 
siar,  Caribou,  and  Eossland.  Prospectors  are  searching 
mile  by  mile  the  mountains  of  Washington,  Oregon, 
and  California,  all  the  way  down  to  the  Mexican  line. 
The  entire  length  of  the  great  Rocky  Mountain  min 
eral  belt  is  being  prospected  more  vigorously  than  ever 
before.  Only  the  other  day,  out  in  the  Mojave  desert, 
a  large  district  was  found,  where  placer  gold  and  rich 
quartz  veins  abound  and  new  camps  are  there  being 
established.  One  of  these  is  called  the  Randsburg. 
As  usual,  stories  of  the  rediscovery  of  the  long-lost 
"  Gunsight  "  and  "  Pegleg  "  mines  come  from  various 
parts  of  the  desert.  Every  issue  of  the  mining  journals 
contains  hundreds  of  items  from  new  camps,  illustrat 
ing  the  toils  and  triumphs  of  the  prospector  as  he  tests 
surface  gravel  claims,  or  tunnels  for  ancient  river  chan 
nels  under  lava  beds,  as  in  Idaho,  or  finds  in  all  sorts 
of  unheard-of  places  the  gleam  of  minerals,  useful  or 
precious. 

Much  has  been  said  in  this  book  about  the  pros 
pector,  and  more  might  justly  be  added,  for  he  still  re 
mains  the  pioneer,  differing  in  essential  details  from 
the  miner,  the  speculator,  and  the  capitalist.  He 
lives  a  free,  careless,  outdoor  life,  and  he  has  blazed 
the  trail  for  others  all  the  way  from  Missouri  and  Texas 
to  Alaska  and  California.  Though  better  fitted  for  his 
work  than  he  was  fifty  years  ago,  and  better  supported 
by  those  who  make  fortunes  from  his  discoveries,  the 
American  prospector  of  to-day  has  not  essentially 


THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY.         271 

changed;  he  is  still  a  wide  traveller,  an  heroic  adven 
turer,  a  man  of  infinite  resource  and  homely,  well-tried 
virtues.  Sometimes,  like  Dick  Gird,  he  reaches  a  dis 
trict  "  with  a  pair  of  blankets  and  six  dollars  in  money," 
and  finds  a  million-dollar  mine;  sometimes,  like  Major 
Beading,  he  "  loads  a  train  of  mules  "  with  gold  nug 
gets  from  new  placers,  but  far  more  often  than  other 
wise  the  wilderness,  which  takes  him  to  its  heart, 
sweetens  his  many  hardships  with  such  devotion  to 
his  chosen  work  that  all  his  life  he  searches  for  hidden 
treasure,  and  rarely  makes  more  than  his  grub  stake. 

The  whole  American  mining  field  broadens  year  by 
year,  not  only  on  the  frontier,  but  in  many  of  the  staid 
and  long-settled  communities.  Perhaps,  with  improved 
methods,  even  the  gold  deposits  of  the  Appalachians, 
from  Nova  Scotia  to  the  Carolinas  and  Georgia,  can  be 
profitably  worked  on  a  large  scale.  The  best  authorities 
declare  that  the  cost  of  roasting  and  chlorinating  ores 
in  a  hundred-ton  plant  is  now  less  than  three  dollars  per 
ton.  By  the  cyanide  process  it  is  even  less,  in  ores 
adapted  to  this  useful  method.  A  few  years  ago  these 
processes  cost  ten  dollars  and  even  twenty  dollars  per 
ton,  but  large  bodies  of  low-grade  ores,  long  necessarily 
neglected,  can  now  be  handled  with  profit. 

So  promising  are  recent  developments  that  it  would 
not  surprise  mining  authorities  if  the  annual  gold  yield 
of  the  United  States,  British  Columbia,  and  Alaska 
reached  the  hundred-million-dollar  mark  by  the  close 
of  the  century;  nor  does  it  seem  unlikely  that  the  total 
yield  of  different  countries  will  add  to  the  world's  gold 
stock  within  the  next  ten  years  more  than  $2,500,000,- 
000.  A  period  of  higher  property  values  and  of  larger 
business  prosperity  is  clearly  indicated  by  this  astonish 
ing  revival  of  mining  interests.  Evidently  the  story 
of  the  miner  and  his  mines  will  go  on  for  ages  to  come. 


272  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

I  may  say,  in  closing,  that  there  has  never  been  a 
time  when  so  many  attractive  and  important  books 
upon  mining  were  being  published  by  specialists.  Be 
sides  the  United  States  Government  Annual  and  Census 
Reports  and  the  invaluable  volumes  of  the  leading 
mining  and  engineering  periodicals  of  America  and 
Europe,  I  note  among  recent  publications  RothwelPs 
Mineral  Industry,  Statistical,  etc.,  a  masterpiece  of 
work;  Eissler's  Metallurgy  of  Gold,  largely  devoted  to 
new  processes;  Hatch  and  Chalmers's  Gold  Mines  of 
the  Rand;  and  Kemp's  Ore  Deposits  of  the  United 
States.  Really  monumental  works  upon  the  history, 
mechanics,  and  metallurgy  of  mining  are  each  year 
appearing  in  greater  numbers.  The  noble  industry 
of  which  I  have  given  only  a  glimpse  is  in  the  hands 
of  highly  trained  specialists,  and  everywhere,  from 
the  arctic  circle  to  the  auriferous  conglomerates  of 
South  Africa,  these  specialists  are  shaping  its  magnifi 
cent  future. 


(7) 


THE  END. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


EAR  I  5  12CG  T  6 

JBJ2    '66       RCO 

,  ,.  -•  ,  '  : 

:.,      ^         ' 

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rrniDKiFrY  TO 

JUL  (>2  1972 

IOAN    AHC 

.  .  3    1973  2 

4 

VT^H^- 

REffDTS  MAK 

LD  21A-60»i-10,'65 
(F7763slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


